health literacy among parents of referral children to hamadan hospital, iran: a cross-sectional study

Background and objective: parent health literacy plays a critical role in the health of the pediatric patients. awareness about the level of health literacy of parents is essential. this study is aimed to investigate the health literacy among parents of referral children to besat hospital, hamadan, iran. materials and methods:  this cross-sectional study was conducted on 100 parents (87 mothers and 13 fathers), who their children were referred to besat hospital, in fall 2021. samples were randomly selected. demographic and tofhla questionnaire were used to collect data.  spss 21 was used to analyze data by independent t-test, chi-square test, anova at a significance level of 0.05.results: the average leve of fathers’ and mothers’ health literacy was 32.64± 10.23 and 64.96 ±22.75, respectively. a total of 85 (85%) of the participants were married and lived with spouses. the education level of 51.72% of mothers and 53.84% of fathers were under diploma. parents’ health literacy was significantly changed based on the parent’s education level (p = 0.05), the parent’s job (p= <0.001), and the place of residency (p=0.001). effect of marital status (p=0.486) and  parents’ gender  (p = 0.984) on parents’ health literacy were not significant. conclusion: half of the parents’ health literacy was inadequate, and the level of health literacy was higher in parents that lived in urban and especial work with higher academic education