Banca de DEFESA: DIANA MARIA ALEXANDRINO PINHEIRO

WOMEN'S HEALTH LITERACY IN A RURAL COMMUNITY IN THE INTERIOR OF BAHIA

Health literacy. Social determinants. Rural Women's Health. Public Health Policies.

Literacy represents an individual's ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, based on printed and written materials. Health Literacy (HL) encompasses the ability to encode and decode any health information, representing rights that must be guaranteed by the State: education and health. When it comes to health in the countryside, there are conditions resulting from the environment that negatively affect health, especially in the female rural population. This work aims, therefore, to understand the level of HL of women living in a rural community in the interior of Bahia, in addition to their sociodemographic profile and the prevalence of predominant diseases. This was a qualitative-quantitative, cross[1]sectional cohort study, using interviews to apply collection instruments. An inadequate LS was found in 63.5% of the sample, influenced by the level of education and socioeconomic classification. The results represent an exclusionary society and LS emerges as an alternative to improving female protagonism in their own lives, health and society. Therefore, greater attention should be given by the State to the population residing in rural areas, especially women, in addition to that provided for in the National Policy for Comprehensive Attention to Women's Health, in order to ensure that they have the necessary skills to access , understand, evaluate and apply health information in the face of the peculiar difficulties imposed by the living condition in which they are inserted.