Health literacy

Purpose Health literate discharge practices meet patient and family health literacy needs in preparation for care transitions from hospital to home. The purpose of this paper is to measure health literate discharge practices in Ontario hospitals using a new organizational survey questionnaire tool and to perform psychometric testing of this new survey. Design/methodology/approach This survey was administered to hospitals in Ontario, Canada. Exploratory factor analysis and reliability testing were performed...

BACKGROUND: A substantial aspect of health literacy is the knowledge of prescribed medication. In chronic heart failure, incomplete intake of prescribed drugs (medication non-adherence) is inversely associated with clinical prognosis. Therefore, we assessed medication knowledge in a cohort of patients with decompensated heart failure at hospital admission and after discharge in a prospective, cross-sectional study. METHODS: One hundred and eleven patients presenting at the emergency department with acute decompensated heart failure were included (mean age 78...

Over the past 20 years, the successes of neonatal and infant surgery have resulted in dramatically changed demographics in ambulatory cardiology. These school-aged children and young adults have complex and, in some cases, previously unexpected cardiac and non-cardiac consequences of their surgical and/or transcatheter procedures. There is a growing need for additional cardiac and non-cardiac subspecialists, and coordination of care may be quite challenging. In contrast to hospital-based care, where inpatient care protocols are common, and perioperative expectations are more or less predictable for most children, ambulatory cardiologists have evolved strategies of care more or less independently, based on their education, training, experience, and individual styles, resulting in highly variable follow-up strategies...

BACKGROUND: In the USA, race and socioeconomic status are well-known factors associated with colorectal cancer incidence and mortality rates. These are higher among blacks than whites and other racial/ethnic groups. METHODS: In this article, we review opportunities to address disparities in colorectal cancer incidence, mortality, and survivorship among African Americans. RESULTS: First, we summarize the primary prevention of colorectal cancer and recent advances in the early detection of the disease and disparities in screening...

OBJECTIVES: To examine health literacy as a mediator of racial disparities in cognitive decline as measured by executive function in elderly adults. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. SETTING: Secondary analysis of ElderWalk trial in Boston, Massachusetts. PARTICIPANTS: English-speaking African-American and Caucasian individuals in a walking intervention for community-dwelling adults aged 65 and older without dementia at baseline who completed baseline and 12-month evaluations (N = 198)...

BACKGROUND: The Spanish-speaking population in the U.S. is large and growing and is known to have lower health literacy than the English-speaking population. Less is known about the health numeracy of this population due to a lack of health numeracy measures in Spanish. OBJECTIVE: we aimed to develop and validate a short and easy to use measure of health numeracy for Spanish-speaking adults: the Spanish Numeracy Understanding in Medicine Instrument (Spanish-NUMi)...

Diabetes during pregnancy is a substantial and growing public health problem disproportionately affecting women in racial/ethnic minority communities. Health literacy and numeracy are skills needed to function in the health care environment. By definition, health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions. Health literacy is increasingly recognized as an important mediator of health disparities in the United States, yet it has been rarely studied during pregnancy...

Low health literacy is a significant barrier to healthcare access and service utilization; however, there are few studies that have evaluated the factors associated with having low health literacy, especially among immigrant minority populations. This exploratory study aimed to assess the key determinants of low health literacy among immigrant Hispanic adults in California using the California Health Interview Survey, the largest population-based state health survey in the United States. Analysis accounted for complex survey design, allowing generalizations to the entire state of California...

The advent of computer based technology and the internet have not changed nurses' responsibility for patient education; but they are rapidly changing what we teach and how we teach. The challenge for nursing informaticians is to create innovative patient education models and applications with the goal of achieving literate, engaged, empowered and informed patients as well as preparing health professionals to maximize the advantages offered by digital media and other new technology based tools. This paper explores the interrelationship of basic literacy, health literacy and technology related literacies that provide the foundation for achieving these goals...

Among increased concerns about the adverse health outcomes of inadequate health literacy, it still remains unclear how health literacy influences health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of patients who have undergone percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Therefore, the aim of the study was to examine the impact of health literacy on HRQoL in PCI patients at 6 months after discharge. This study used a self-reported questionnaire to assess health literacy, medication knowledge, and HRQoL in 238 patients. In hierarchical linear regression, health literacy was the strongest predictor of HRQoL after adjusting confounding factors (β = ...

Low health literacy has been linked to inadequate engagement in care and may serve as a contributor to poor health outcomes among people living with HIV and AIDS. The purpose of this paper was to examine the perspectives of health care providers and professional care team members regarding health literacy in HIV disease. A secondary data analysis was conducted from a qualitative study aimed at understanding factors that help an HIV positive person to manage their HIV disease. Data were collected from sites in Botswana, the US, and Puerto Rico...

Discrimination and inequalities in healthcare can be experienced by many patients due to many characteristics ranging from the obviously visible to the more subtly noticeable, such as race and ethnicity, legal status, social class, linguistic fluency, health literacy, age, gender and weight. Discrimination can take a number of forms including overt racist statement, stereotyping or explicit and implicit attitudes and biases. This paper presents the case study of a complex transcultural clinical encounter between the mother of a young infant in a highly vulnerable social situation and a hospital healthcare team...

OBJECTIVE: Identifying differences in transition readiness according to chronic condition is essential for understanding whether special emphasis within specific populations is warranted. Youth with chronic conditions (type 1 diabetes, Turner syndrome, spina bifida, autism spectrum disorder [ASD]) representing various types of impairments were compared with youth without chronic conditions. It was hypothesized that differences would be observed according to condition type, with youth with cognitive/behavioral conditions showing less readiness than youth with other conditions and youth without chronic conditions showing the highest levels of transition readiness...

CONTEXT: There is little research investigating whether health information technologies, such as interactive voice recognition, are effective ways to deliver information to individuals with lower health literacy. OBJECTIVE: Determine the extent to which the impact of an interactive voice recognition-based intervention to improve medication adherence appeared to vary by participants' health literacy level. DESIGN: Promoting Adherence to Improve Effectiveness of Cardiovascular Disease Therapies (PATIENT) was a randomized clinical trial designed to test the impact, compared with usual care, of 2 technology-based interventions that leveraged interactive voice recognition to promote medication adherence...

BACKGROUND: The ubiquity of cell phones, which allow for short message service (SMS), provides new and innovative opportunities for disease prevention and health education. OBJECTIVE: To explore the use of cell phone-based health education SMS to improve the health literacy of community residents in China. METHODS: A multi-stage random sampling method was used to select representative study communities and participants ≥ 18 years old. Intervention participants were sent health education SMSs once a week for 1 year and controls were sent conventional, basic health education measures...

OBJECTIVE: This exploratory study assessed health literacy among urban African-American high school students to improve understanding of the association between adolescent health literacy and asthma. METHODS: We conducted a secondary data analysis of the control group (n = 181) of the Puff City randomized controlled trial (2006-2010), a web-based intervention to promote asthma management among students, grades 9 through 12. A validated self-report 3-item health literacy screening instrument was completed at final online follow-up survey...