Background: Fall accidents, especially amongst the elderly, are considered to be events of
external cause of deaths that are responsible for about five million deaths each year, which
represents about 9% of the worldwide mortality. In Brazil, this event is the third cause of death.
Health literacy relates to knowledge, motivation, and one’s competence in searching,
comprehending and analyzing health related information so they can eventually make decisions
over health promotion, disease prevention and improvement in quality of life. Aim: Finding
out the level of health literacy amongst an elderly group on the topic of fall accidents and its
prevention. Methods: This is an exploratory-descriptive study using a qualitative approach.
The participants are 80 elderly that were also public square goers, from these, 40 elderly were
interviewed in the Public Square A (located in a middle class neighborhood) and the other forty
were interviewed in Public Square B (located in a low-income neighborhood). The interviews
used the instrument “Health Literacy”, translated and adapted by Lisiane Paskulin et al. for use
within the Brazilian scenario. The sociodemographic data was analyzed using descriptive
statistics. The qualitative analysis over the content of the responses to the open questions were
categorized according to its different dimensions, considering its nature and frequency. The
research project was approved by UFPA - Hospital Barros Barreto’s Research Ethics
Committee, under the protocol number 2.095.048. Results: In between both groups there was
a predominance of the female gender. A higher formal education rate was found amongst the
elderly interviewed in the Public Square A, with the years of formal education varying from 5
to 9 (62,5%), against 1 to 4 years of formal education amongst the elderly found in Public
Square B (42,5%). The majority of the elderly in both public squares were house owners. The
analysis of the health literacy data was distributed in five dimensions: finding fall accidents
information, comprehending fall accidents information, sharing fall accidents information,
repercussion of the fall accidents information to the elder, and participation in health education
groups. Health literacy in both the middle class neighborhood group and in the low income
neighborhood group reached a low level. Conclusion: The low level of health literacy over fall
accidents and its prevention was found to be a very important lack in health education. The low
percentage of responses from the elderly when questioned over the different dimensions of
health literacy revealed an apparent conformity and passivity over general health information.
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