Health literacy and attitudes toward/experience of acupuncture in Japan

What is it about?

We conducted a web-based survey to know the relationship between health literacy of Japanese people, their attitudes toward acupuncture, and their behavior in choosing this therapy. The older, educated, female participants tended to have higher health literacy. The respondents perceived acupuncture to be effective for chronic low back pain, tensiontype headache, and knee pain due to osteoarthritis (40.0%, 38.7%, and 21.8%, respectively). The Japanese population with higher health literacy was more likely to perceive acupuncture positively, but their decision to receive acupuncture seemed to be more dependent on personal narratives rather than clinical evidence.

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Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Our findings suggest that individual education of the people on how to choose a reliable health information source and organizational efforts to provide more reliable health information are important.