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.
