Health literacy and obesity: A systematic scoping review

Obesity is a preventable global health epidemic that has serious health consequences. Health literacy has been identified as an underlying and modifiable factor in the development and maintenance of obesity. Adequate levels of health literacy have been shown to significantly impact on weight loss, weight loss maintenance, and associated health outcomes.

The aim of the current study was to systematically review extant literature to evaluate the way in which health literacy is measured for individuals with obesity and to identify the key areas of health literacy that are commonly assessed.

This systematic scoping review was conducted over five databases and yielded 12 papers (N_participants = 15,393) that represented our search strategy and inclusion and exclusion criteria.

The review highlighted there are currently multiple measures that exist that assess independent or dual domains of health literacy; however, there were no studies that specifically utilized a measure that holistically assessed the three maintaining and modifiable domains of health literacy of obesity (psychological knowledge, nutritional knowledge, and knowledge about physical activity).

Given the dearth of targeted health literacy measures for obesity, our findings highlighted a critical need to develop a distinct measure of health literacy for obesity to guide policy, research, education, and intervention.