Health literacy of inland population in the mitigation phase 3.2. of COVID-19's pandemic in Portugal - a descriptive cohort study

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Abstract

Background: COVID-19 is a respiratory disease transmitted through respiratory droplets with a high transmission rate. There's still no effective and approved antiretroviral treatment or vaccine, thus, preventive measures are the main key to contain this pandemic. Portugal is now in phase 3.2 of the mitigation of COVID-19, being imperative to understand the health literacy of our country and how to prevent the lack of information, through community empowerment. Material and methods: A cross-sectional study with a cohort from a primary care facility was conducted. We collected demographic and epidemiological data and carried out a questionnaire by phone call. Descriptive statistics and nonparametric tests were used to assess associations between the independent variables and the level of health literacy. The level of significance was set at p<0.05. Results: Our cohort includes 222 subjects (median age: 62 years old), mostly females (131), undergraduate (193) and with at least one risk factor for COVID-19 (144). Globally, younger individuals, females, graduates and the Non-Risk Group appear to have higher levels of health literacy, with some exceptions to this pattern. Conclusions: We observe a well-informed population. However, being a pandemic situation, we intend to identify and correct outliers/misconceptions. This work allows a perspective of the current state/pattern of health literacy as well as its possible predictors. Furthermore, this study makes aware of how relevant the specific communication approaches are. Further studies to understand the predictors of health literacy are necessary. Key-Words: COVID-19, pandemic, SARS-CoV2, Portugal, Health literacy.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.11.20098061: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Concerning the other variables, we categorized subjects according to their “Gender” (“Female” and “Male”); Education (“Undergraduate Group” - <4 years of schooling; 4, 6, 9 or 12 years of schooling; “Graduate Group” - Graduate, Master’s Degree and/or Doctorate); “Risk factor(s) for COVID-19 codified by ICP-2” (“Risk Group” - presence - and “Non-risk Group” - absence - as described in “Norma de Orientação Clínica 004/2020” by Direção Geral de Saúde (DGS) such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary
    Doctorate)
    suggested: None
    We performed the statistical analysis of the collected data using Microsoft Office Excel 2019®
    Microsoft Office Excel
    suggested: (Microsoft Excel, RRID:SCR_016137)
    (Microsoft, Redmond, Washington, USA) and the SPSS® statistical package (standard version 22.0; SPSS, Chicago, IL, USA).
    SPSS®
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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