Health Literacy and Men\'s Attitudes and Practices toward Prostate Cancer Screening

Background:  Health literacy as a vital indicator of health care costs plays an important role in facilitating effective health communication strategies. Screening is one of these strategies, so that intervention and management can be provided ahead of schedule. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between health literacy and men's practices and their attitude toward   prostate cancer screening.  Methods: This is a descriptive-correlational study. The sample consisted of 300 men over 40 years of age living in west Tehran who were recruited by convenient sampling method in public places of the city. Data were collected by Health Literacy for Iranian Adults (HELIA), and prostate cancer screening questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS-PC v. 16.    Results: The results showed that the mean score of health literacy score was at an adequate level (84.61 ± 5.95), 82.7% had a positive attitude and 70.3% had not done prostate cancer screening. Health literacy was positively correlated with attitude and practice (P<0.001), marital status with standard coefficient (-0. 709) had the highest association with health literacy, occupational status (employed) with (standard coefficient=0.551) and unemployed with (standard coefficient 0.556) had the highest association with attitude, marital status had the highest relationship with practice (P <0.001). Conclusion: Despite adequate health literacy and positive attitudes of men toward prostate cancer screening, their screening performance was poor. According to the results, proper training of health care providers and suitable training programs by national media is recommended.  Development of simple and understandable health education programs for prostate cancer screening is also recommended.