Littératie en santé en contexte de lutte contre les maladies cardiovasculaires au Cameroun Mesure, Profil et lien avec la Promotion de la santé

Abstract

A recent but already substantial body of literature demonstrates that health literacy is the most important variable of the 21st century that predict a person and a city health and to evaluate the efficiency of the public health policies of the States. With regard to the cardiovascular diseases, it has been demonstrated that having good health literacy competencies was a guarantee for a better healthcare, illness prevention and health promotion. However, in Cameroon, this variable remains at a time unrecognized by researchers, educators, healthcare professionals, and policies makers although the country faces the weakness of the pillars of his health system. Objective. The objective of this thesis was to make a state on the situation of the health literacy in Cameroon, in link with the adoption of health promoting behaviors in order to give factual and future bases for future studies. Method. The study was based on a multiphase methodology approach with use of the questionnaires within participants aged 15 and above. The exploratory analysis and the confirmatory analysis have been used to decide on the psychometric properties of two tools for data collection. Whereas the descriptive analysis and the correlational analysis have been used to establish the profile of health literacy of the population and the relation between health literacy and health promoting behaviors. Results. The results reveal that health literacy studies in Cameroon is yet at the embryonic state. They permitted to validate two valid psychometrics tools for the assessment of health literacy and health promotion behaviors level. The results also indicated that close to 75 % of the general population had limited health literacy. Finally, evident from this thesis is that health literacy is an independent predictor of health promoting behaviors among adolescents and young adults. Conclusion. The study suggests the necessity to intensify the research in the domain of the health literacy in Cameroon. This could permit development of new psychometric measure adapted to the context, in other to better understand the role of health literacy in promoting healthy behaviors among different social categories in this period where many developing countries faces increase number of cases of chronic patients notably the cardiovascular patients.