To control COVID‐19, several strategies were proposed in Iran since the start of the outbreak. The number of reported infected people and its consequent death toll herald relative inadequacies in the quality and extent of the measures in curbing the COVID‐19 transmission cycle. This study was conducted to investigate knowledge, attitude, precautionary practices and degree of fear related to COVID‐19 in a sample of Iranian population. This study was conducted among 457 residents of Kurdistan Province, Iran, through social networks and social media (WhatsApp and Telegram). Knowledge, attitude and practice and fear of COVID‐19 were collected using valid tools. Multiple logistic regression and multivariate linear regression analyses were used to identify factors associated with binary outcome attitudes, practices and continuous variables knowledge and fear of COVID‐19, respectively. The mean (SD) age of participants was 37.86 (10.42); of them, 252 (55.1%) were men, and more than two‐thirds were married (74.8%). About 10% of the respondents were in believed that COVID‐19 could create a type of social stigma. Level of knowledge about COVID‐19 in 77.8% of the study attendees was acceptable, and 352 of them (70%) were confident that the virus would eventually be successfully controlled in the world, but only 252 of the attendants (50%) had confidence about successful control of COVID‐19 in Iran. Applying multiple logistic regression, knowledge (OR: 1.18, p = 0.028) and fear (OR: 1.04, p = 0.028) of COVID‐19 were associated with positive attitude towards controllability of COVID‐19. Gender (OR: 1.96, p = 0.012), sources of information (OR: 5.00, p = 0.005) and knowledge (OR: 1.27, p = 0.006) were also indicated association with taking precautionary practices to control COVID‐19. Further studies are recommended to boost level of knowledge, strengthen positive attitude and ameliorate behavioural pattern for successful control of COVID‐19 in Iran.

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Background Health literacy (HL) as a social determinant of health has a determinant role in providing different populations with healthcare services, in an equal manner. Our aim in this study was to investigate the contribution of socio-demographic factors to functional health literacy (FHL) in a population of Iranian adults and identify differences in the contribution of these factors across genders.Methods This community-based cross-sectional study was conducted in 2015 to 2016 in Sanandaj, Iran. Multistage cluster sampling was employed to recruit 1000 people older than 18 (response rate = 89.2%) from 35 urban and 10 rural health care centers through home-based interviews. Test of functional health literacy in adults (TOFHLA) was used to assess FHL. In order to measure inequality in FHL, a concentration index decomposition was used.Results Participants included 869 respondents (57.5% women) with a mean age of 33.68 year. Participants demonstrated an average TOFHLA score of 51.9. Women demonstrated slightly higher TOFHLA scores (52.2 [SD: 0.46]) compared to men (50.7 [SD: 0.4]). However, the concentration index for gender was 10.9% suggesting gender contributed only moderately to TOFHLA scores. Comparatively, 54.3% of TOFHLA differences were attributed to geographic location. Among women, place of residence, monthly income age, education level, being head of household, and contributed to 43%, 32%, 13%,11.5% and 11%, of FHL inequality, respectively. Among men, however, place of residence (45.2%) size of household (15.1%), and monthly income (13.5%) contributed most to inequality in FHL.Conclusions This research suggests sociodemographic characteristics contributed differently to FHL inequality depending on gender. Understanding these differences may assist in identifying and targeting interventions towards men and women with low levels of FHL. Furthermore, work by health policy makers and health promotion specialists to address these contributing social factors may help to alleviate inequalities in health literacy.

Background Health literacy, as a social determinant of health, has a decisive role in providing different populations with healthcare services in an equal manner. Our aim in this study was to investigate the contribution of socio-demographic factors to functional health literacy (FHL) in a population of Iranian adults and identify differences in the contribution of these factors across genders. Methods This community-based cross-sectional study was conducted in 2015 to 2016 in Sanandaj, Iran. Multistage cluster sampling was employed to recruit 1000 people older than 18 (response rate = 89.2%) from 35 urban and 10 rural health care centers. Test of functional health literacy in adults (TOFHLA) was used to assess FHL. In order to measure inequality in FHL, concentration index decomposition was used. Results In total, 869 respondents (response rate: 86.9%) with a mean age (standard deviation; SD) of 33.68 (13.0) completed TOFHLA questionnaire. More than half of participants were women (57.5%). Participants demonstrated an average TOFHLA score of 51.9. Women demonstrated slightly higher TOFHLA scores (52.2 [SD: 0.46]) compared to men (50.7 [SD: 0.4]). However, the concentration index for gender was 10.9% suggesting gender contributed only moderately to TOFHLA scores. Comparatively, 54.3% of TOFHLA differences were attributed to geographic location. Among women, place of residence, monthly income, age, education level and being head of household contributed to 43%, 32%, 13%, 11.5% and 11% of FHL inequality, respectively. Among men, however, place of residence (45.2%), size of household (15.1%) and monthly income (13.5%) contributed most to inequality in FHL. Conclusions Although gender was not the strongest contributing factor for FHL inequalities, poor FHL was mostly concentrated among men. Different factors were attributed to FHL inequality by gender, as discussed inside. Understanding these differences may assist in identifying and targeting interventions towards men and women with low levels of FHL. Our findings shed light the critical role of social determinants of health (SDH) in promoting the health literacy of populations, particularly in developing countries like Iran.