Evaluatıon of Health Literacy and Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors of Unıversıty Students that Study in Health-Related Department

INTRODUCTION: This study is carried out to determine the health literacy and healthy lifestyle behaviors of university students studying in health-related departments. METHODS: The descriptive and cross-sectional study was carried out between February and May 2020. The research was completed with 1086 students studying and accepting to participate the research in health-related departments at three different state universities. During collecting the data, “Questionnaire Form”, Health Literacy Scale” and “The Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors Scale II” are used. RESULTS: The average score of the students from Turkish Health Literacy Scale was 36.2 ± 8.3 and 41.3% of them have sufficient health literacy. The students' “Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors Scale II” mean score is 125,3 ± 24,0 and is at an intermediate level. It was observed that some characteristics such as gender, income level, perception of health, education status of parents, the faculty and department of education were effective on the scores obtained by the students from the scales. It has been determined that individuals with high health literacy scores have more healthy lifestyle behaviors. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: It is of great importance to increase the level of health literacy in students studying health sciences in order to develop and maintain healthy lifestyle behaviors.