Health Information and Communication Needs Under One Health Approach in Tanzania: Do Health Professionals Influence Health Literacy?

Abstract

Health professionals (HPs) have always been considered as a source of health information (HI). Nonetheless, potentiality of this source relies on HPs’ recognition and response to the community’s information and communication needs hence contributing significantly to diseases prevention, health care and promotion. Definitely, attaining optimal health calls for collaboration among animals, humans, and environmental HPs plus understanding the consequences of the interactions of animals, humans, and environment on health. This article discusses the influence of HPs on health literacy (HL) in the context of One Health Approach (OHA) in Morogoro, Tanzania. Through the use of questionnaire, data were captured from a 1440 sample which was obtained by the use of multistage sampling. The study also involved 16 and 80 individuals as a key informant interviews and focus group discussions respectively. Score Indexes measured the interaction of HPs with community members (CMs) and HL. A chi-squared test assessed the influence of HPs on HL. IBM-SPSS v.20 was employed in analysing quantitative data; whereas qualitative data were thematically analysed. Findings show that (32.9%) of the respondents had adequate HL, while (30.8%) and (36.3%) had moderate and inadequate HL. Findings further show a significant association between the level of HPs’ interactions with CMs and HL, (χ 2= 168.593, p= 0.000, phi =0.342). This concludes that HPs influence HL. Effective interventions should be formulated to enable HPs attend to CMs’ information and communication needs for further influence of HL under OHA.