A healthy lifestyle education programme for health literacy and health‐promoting behaviours: A pre‐implementation and post‐implementation study.

Aim: The aim of this study was to determine whether implementation of a healthy lifestyle education programme resulted in improved health literacy levels and healthy life style behaviours. Methods: A one‐group pretest‐posttest study design was used. This study was carried out with 30 women who were enrolled in a family health centre. A questionnaire comprising the Adult Health Literacy Scale, Healthy Lifestyle Behaviour Scale‐II, Perception of Health Scale, and Short Test of Functional Health Literacy was used for data collection. Eight home visits including training and follow‐up followed the first interview at the family health centre. The healthy lifestyle training was applied once per week during home visits. After the training sessions were completed, women were followed‐up through four home visits biweekly in the second and the third months. Results: The difference between the Adult Health Literacy Scale and Short Test of Functional Health Literacy pretest‐posttest mean scores was statistically significant (P <.05). Although the Perception of Health Scale and the Healthy Lifestyle Behaviour Scale‐II posttest scores were higher than the pretest scores, the difference between the groups was not statistically significant. Conclusion: The training and counselling intervention visits increased health literacy but did not significantly change the healthy life style behaviours and health perceptions of the women. SUMMARY STATEMENT: What is already known about this topic? Health literacy is an essential issue to consider in planning programmes to decrease inequalities and increase health promotion in disadvantaged groups.Women are one disadvantaged group who play a key role in protecting and promoting the health of both their society and their family. What this paper adds? Unlike many studies with disease‐specific samples, this was a community‐based study, conducted with community‐dwelling women without any co‐morbidity, using both national and global measurement tools.The health literacy levels of the women was increased via a training and counselling intervention delivered during home visits by public health nurses.The intervention did not have a significant effect on women's healthy life styles and health perceptions. The implications of this paper: The findings of our study indicate that public health nurses as educators and counsellors can impact health literacy levels of women.Public health nurses can improve women's health literacy by empowering women. More health literate women means more healthy generations, families, and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]