Health Literacy: Does It Matter? Part 3

Two months ago, really close to three months now, I commented on two studies looking at health literacy.  The first study linked low health literacy to greater all-cause mortality in patients w/heart failure.  The second study linked longer pediatric hospitalization length of stay to parents' lower health literacy.  And as I mentioned obliquely last week, low education attainment is considered one of the biggest risk factors for Alzheimer's disease.

Therefore, it's no surprise that I found a systematic review published last week in Annals of Internal Medicine looking at how health literacy affects us.  After poring over 96 good or fair quality studies, the authors concluded that low health literacy is associated with more hospitalizations and greater use of emergency care, both of which drive up health care costs.

Those patients w/low health literacy are less likely to get screening mammograms, less likely to get annual preventive influenza vaccinations, less able to read/interpret labels & health messages, and less able to demonstrate how to take their complicated medication regimens.  In the elderly, the ultimate consequence of low health literacy is lower overall health status and higher mortality.

True, it might not be easy to teach our parents to read, much less understand health-related material.  But before this situation explodes in our collective faces, we need to improve upon the education of our children in order to prevent a mushroom of Alzheimer's disease and depletion of our ability to (pay for) care in the very near future.