"The relationship between women’s health literacy and traditional practices about infant care and breastfeeding in the postnatal period"

Abstract

This research was conducted to identify the relationship between traditional practices about infant care and breastfeeding in the postnatal period and health literacy. The research was performed as a correlational and descriptive study. The research population was comprised of 410 women who applied to Sıtmapınarı and Sıtmapınarı No. 1 Family Heath Centers from 31 March 2018 to 2 June 2019 and were in the first six months of the postnatal period. The Participant Information Form and the Turkish Health Literacy Scale - 32 were used in the collection of research data. The research data were evaluated via percentages, arithmetic means, and the Pearson correlation analysis. In the research, it was found that almost all participant women used traditional practices about infant care whilst four-fifths of them employed traditional practices about breastfeeding. It was ascertained that the number of traditional practices used by the participant women in relation to infant had no statistically significant relationship with the means of scores obtained by the participant women from the overall Turkish Health Literacy Scale and its sub-scales (p>0.05). It was identified that the number of traditional practices used by the participant women in relation to breastfeeding had no statistically significant relationship with the means of scores obtained by them from the overall Turkish Health Literacy Scale and its ‘accessing information’, ‘understanding information’, ‘appraising information’, ‘using/applying information’, and ‘treatment and service’ sub-scales (p>0.05) whilst it had a very weak statistically significant relationship with ‘protection from diseases and improvement of health’ sub-scale (p<0.05). In the research, it was discerned that the participant women heavily used traditional methods about infant care and breastfeeding and there was no statistically significant relationship between the practice of traditional methods and health literacy