To explore the relationship between the interaction of health literacy and mobile phone dependence and sub-health status of college students, so as to provide evidence-based evidence for improving sub-health status of college students.

Cluster sampling was used to investigate the social demographic characteristics, health literacy, mobile phone dependence and sub-health of college students in Shandong Second Medical University. logistic regression model was used to analyze the correlation between each factor and sub-health status, and the interaction between health literacy and mobile phone dependence and sub-health status was analyzed.

The total detection rates of mobile phone dependence and sub-health were 83.8% (461/550) and 66.7% (367/550), respectively. After adjusting relevant variables, logistic regression analysis found that college students with low health literacy and dependence on mobile phones had the highest risk of sub-health, which was 31.901 times that of college students with high health literacy and no dependence on mobile phones, and the college students without mobile phone dependence and high health literacy were taken as the reference group, and mobile phone dependence and medium and low health literacy had positive synergistic interactions with sub-health, OR values were 5.030 (95% CI: 3.079 - 8.217) and 8.014 (95% CI: 4.404 - 14.583). The calculated relative values of RERI, AP and SI didn’t meet the conditions and cannot indicate the existence of additive interaction.

The interaction between health literacy and mobile phone dependence is associated with sub-health status of college students, which can be used as an evidence-based basis to improve health.