Abstract
The Thai Health Literacy Survey (THL-S) of Thais aged 15 years and above has four objectives as follows: 1. to study the current situation of health literacy among Thais aged 15 years and above at the health regional and national level across health literacy competences and health domains. 2. to explore relationships between relevant factors and health literacy for identifying populations at risk. 3. to raise awareness among health professionals and relevant professionals on the impact of limited health literacy on national public health. 4. to produce evidence – based knowledge for better policy making, planning and implementation. The survey took place between March – August 2019. The Office of DoH 4.0 and Health Literacy led the project in collaborations with the 12 health promoting centers and Metropolitan Health and Wellness Institute. The project was financially supported by the Health System Research Institute. The valid sample size was 17,530 people. 38.67 percent were male and 61.33 percent were female. Key Recommendations Relevant organizations in health, educational, and social sectors should raise awareness and improve understanding among their personnel about the impact of limited health literacy on access to and utilization of their services. Effective health literacy related interventions should emphasize two approaches; one is to motivate and build individual capacity needed for finding, understanding, communicating and making health related decisions. The other one is to reduce the system demand and complexity and empower the people to become self-reliant so that the systems and services are health literacy friendly for all. Relevant educational organizations should build a strong literacy among students for finding, understanding, communicating about health information and making health related decisions. They might emphasize e-health literacy skills. The people in communities should be encouraged to take part in community based activities and assigned a role. All organizations should develop reliable and accessible channels for disseminating and searching for information. They also should announce and explain how to make use of the channels in appropriate manners. Curricula for health professionals, educators and social workers should address knowledge, skills, and technologies that can be used to facilitate and assist those who have limited health literacy.
