Survey of occupational health literacy levels among workers in two key industries in Qingpu District of Shanghai

Objective To investigate the occupational health literacy level among workers in two key industries in Qingpu District of Shanghai and to identify influencing factors in order to provide references for formulating relevant occupational health measures.

Methods From June to September 2022, a multi-stage cluster random sampling method was used to select 965 workers from 18 enterprises in the automobile manufacturing and electrical machinery and equipment manufacturing industries in Qingpu District.The National Key Population Occupational Health Literacy Monitoring Survey Individual Questionnaire was distributed to collect data on basic information, occupational health literacy levels, and physical and mental health status.The factors affecting workers' occupational health literacy levels were analyzed.

Results The overall occupational health literacy level among these surveyed workers was 66.2%, with the levels for the four dimensions as: basic knowledge of occupational health protection (87.8%), healthy work methods and behaviors (77.8%), knowledge of occupational health laws (73.4%), and basic skills of occupational health protection (42.8%).Among the four types of physical and mental health problems, the detection rates were 64.1% for depression, 34.0% for sleep disorders, 22.3% for anxiety, and 20.9% for occupational stress.Multivariate linear regression analysis showed that compared to workers with primary school education or below, those with junior high school education had a 6.0% higher score of occupational health literacy, and the occupational health literacy score rate of workers with high school, vocational high school, technical secondary school, college, bachelor degree, and above increased by about 8%(P < 0.05).Compared to workers in small enterprises, workers in medium-sized enterprises had a 2.9% lower score of occupational health literacy (P < 0.05).The detection rates of depression, sleep disorders, and occupational stress were negatively correlated with occupational health literacy level (r=-0.115, -0.093, -0.157, P < 0.01).

Conclusions The overall level of occupational health literacy among workers in these two key industries was not high, the basic skills of occupational health protection were lacking, and the incidence of depression was relatively high.The targeted intervention measures should be developed for the corresponding enterprises and populations to improve their workers'occupational health literacy levels.