Summary:Older people who are active Internet users and who regularly indulge in a spot of culture may be better able to retain their health literacy, and therefore maintain good health, suggests research.
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There was a link between age and declining health literacy, and being non-white, having relatively low wealth, few educational qualifications, and difficulties carrying out routine activities of daily living.
Poorer memory and executive function scores at the start of the study were also linked to greater health literacy decline over the subsequent six years.
Around 40% of the entire sample said they never used the internet or email, while one in three (32%) said they did so regularly. Similar proportions said they had consistently engaged in civic (35%) and/or leisure (31%) activities over the six year follow-up period.
Almost four out of 10 (39%) said they had regularly engaged in cultural activities, such as going to the cinema, theatre, galleries, concerts or the opera, during this time.
Across all time points, internet use and engagement in civic, leisure, or cultural activities were lower among those whose health literacy declined.
After taking account of influential factors, only the links between regular internet use and engaging in cultural activities remained statistically significant.
But each factor appeared to exert an additive effect, and a combination of all four seemed to afford the best protection against health literacy decline, a finding that was independent of any tailing off in cognitive function.
This is an observational study so no definitive conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect.
Good points about the limits of observational studies and how NNT (number needed to treat) is a good indicator of the efficacy of an intervention. Also good point of how a good preventive diet can often trump medications/surgery. Well worth the 18 minutes of viewing.
From the Web site
Published on Sep 29, 2012
Dr. Newman is the Director of Clinical Research in the Emergency Department at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, and an Iraq war veteran. In addition to being widely published in medical journals he has written health care articles for the New York Times and is the author of Hippocrates’ Shadow: Secrets From the House of Medicine. For the past ten years he has concentrated his work in medical evidence translation and appraisal. He is also the editor-in-chief for two online publications, TheNNT.com, a resource for health care evidence summaries, and SMART-EM, a monthly audio review. He lives in New York City with his wife and teaches at both Mount Sinai School of Medicine and at Columbia University.
This resource is a bit off topic. It is an educational resource basically for junior high and high school teachers. However, I find it fascinating on how it shows the interrelationship among science and mathematical concepts. Here’s a few that are health/medical related
Health literacy used to be thought of as a problem individuals had in understanding health information and making health decisions. Now health literacy is beginning to be viewed in more holistic terms. For example, health care providers (from nurses to institutions) now view themselves as having roles in providing relevant understandable information to patients and the public.
What brought about this change in focus? According to the article below, major health policy initiatives at the federal level, including the “Plain Writing Act of 2010, which requires all new publications, forms, and publicly distributed documents from the federal government to be written in a “clear, concise, well-organized” manner.”
Here is an abstract of the article (in the journal Health Affairs, January 12, 2012)
Health literacy is the capacity to understand basic health information and make appropriate health decisions. Tens of millions of Americans have limited health literacy—a fact that poses major challenges for the delivery of high-quality care. Despite its importance, health literacy has until recently been relegated to the sidelines of health care improvement efforts aimed at increasing access, improving quality, and better managing costs. Recent federal policy initiatives, including the Affordable Care Act of 2010, the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy, and the Plain Writing Act of 2010, have brought health literacy to a tipping point—that is, poised to make the transition from the margins to the mainstream. If public and private organizations make it a priority to become health literate, the nation’s health literacy can be advanced to the point at which it will play a major role in improving health care and health for all Americans…
In years past, clinicians and researchers alike largely viewed these issues and outcomes in terms of individual patient deficits—that is, a patient’s lack of knowledge and skills regarding health issues. We now recognize that health literacy is a dynamic systems issue,2 reflecting the complexity of both the health information being presented and the health care system being navigated.3 As summarized by the Institute of Medicine, addressing the challenge of health literacy requires system-level changes for both health professionals and organizations…
It is impossible to list all relevant related resources here!
A small sampling..
Health Literacy Library Guides (while aimed at professionals, librarians, etc, some have links to materials for the rest of us)
MedlinePlus – Over 750 topics on conditions, diseases, and wellness. Information ondrugs, herbs, and supplements. Links to directories (health care providers, health care facilities, etc) and organizations which provider health information. Surgery videos, informative slideshows, and more.
Familydoctor.org includes health information for the whole family
Short generalized information on Diseases and Conditions (with A-Z index), Health Information for Seniors, Men, and Women, Healthy Living Topics, pages geared to Parents & Kids, and videos. Numerous health tools in the left column (as health trackers, health assessments, and a Search by Symptom page.
KidsHealth provides information about health, behavior, and development from before birth through the teen years. Material is written by doctors in understandable language at three levels: parents, kids, and teens
KidsHealth also provides families with perspective, advice, and comfort about a wide range of physical, emotional, and behavioral issues that affect children and teens.
Understanding Health Research
“Summaries for Patients” are short summaries of studies and clinical guidelines (how medicine is best practiced) are published in Annals of Internal Medicine.
[Go to Summaries for Patients, scroll down a little, the right column has link to all summaries and a search box ]Summaries about studies describe how researchers did the published study and what they found.
Summaries about clinical guidelines describe the official recommendations for patient care
patientINFORM plain language summary Web sites are provided by participating publishers to help patients or their caregivers more fully understand the implications of research and to provide links to the full text of research articles they’ve selected from participating journals. The publishers allow readers following links from patientINFORM material on the health organizations’ sites to access the full text of these articles without a subscription, and they provide patients and caregivers with free or reduced-fee access to other articles in participating journals.
Cochrane Collaboration provides systematic reviews (thorough summaries) of the strongest evidence available about healthcare interventions (as drugs and medical procedures). It does not cover all interventions, but those covered were reviewed in-depth by experts in the medical and library fields.
Here is how to find plain language and audio summaries of Cochrane reviewsGo to the Cochrane Collaboration home page and scroll down to Browse Free Summaries.
Topics include Breast Cancer, Dementia and Cognitive Improvement, and Complementary Medicine.
Click on To the Cochrane Library in the upper right corner of the Cochrance Collaboration home page.
This Cochrane Library search page has a Help page , and an Advanced Search option.
Reflections on the importance of health information literacy awareness and how it impacts the public health of our citizens. Low health literacy affects nearly 50% of the US population.
The following was posted to several listservs by Mary Alice Gillispie, M.D.; Healthy Roads Media. “Healthy Roads Media has several new free patient education resources. There is now a Spanish version of Advance Directives in multiple formats. There is also an English version of A Quick Look at Medicare in multiple formats. The link iswww.healthyroadsmedia.org/topics/personalhealth.htm We hope to have materials on both Medicare and Medicaid in English, Spanish and Russian in the next couple of months.
If you work for one of the hundreds of organizations who uses Healthy Roads Media materials but have not provided any support, please consider making an end of the year tax deductible donation (www.healthyroadsmedia.org/donate.htm). Keeping these materials free and adding new resources is an increasing challenge!
A patient’s education level is not a fail-safe predictor of how well they will manage symptoms related to complicated chronic diseases, such as heart failure, according to a Purdue University study.
“Our research indicates that some of the better-educated heart failure patients in our sample did not manage their symptoms as well as those who were less educated,” said Karen S. Yehle, an assistant professor of nursing who specializes in cardiovascular conditions. “We’re not sure why this is. It could be that heart failure patients with lower health literacy experience symptoms more often and, therefore, know how to manage them better. No matter the reason, it’s a reminder to doctors, nurses and pharmacists to communicate clearly and thoroughly to all patients, regardless of how much information or guidance they might believe a particular patient needs.” …
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“Overall, we found that health literacy – a patient’s ability to read and understand health information – was associated with proper daily care and management for heart failure patients,” Chen said. “But there was a statistically significant negative relationship with self-care management, or when patients respond to heart failure symptoms.When patients with higher health literacy did not have symptoms, they were better at adhering to the day-to-day care of the condition in comparison to those with lower health literacy. However, when symptomatic, they appeared to have more difficulty in addressing the condition-related problems.” ..
“It’s critical that providers have better insight into how to communicate with their patients or follow up with them about their self-care,” Plake said. “From a practitioner viewpoint, you can’t assume that the information delivered to a patient is interpreted the way you want it to be. We can’t make the assumption that if someone is highly educated they are more likely to take better care of themselves.”
Yesterday evening the PBS News Hour had an engaging segment on a news literacy program in several major American cities.
The students learn how to separate fact from fiction in news.
JEFFREY BROWN: The lesson is part of an effort called the News Literacy Project, a four-year-old program now taught to middle and high school students in 21 inner-city and suburban schools in the Washington, D.C., area, New York City, and Chicago.
It was started by former Los Angeles Times investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner Alan Miller.
ALAN MILLER, News Literacy Project:A century ago, Mark Twain said that a lie can get halfway around the world while truth is still putting on its shoes.In this hyperlinked information age, a lie can get all the way around the world and back while truth is still getting out of bed.
There is so much potential here for misinformation, for propaganda, for spin, all of the myriad sources that are out there.More and more of, the onus is shifting to the consumer.
JEFFREY BROWN: And a slew of recent studies supports the notion that young people seek out traditional news sources less and less and that they have a difficult time knowing how to judge the legitimacy of the information that does come at them.
Of course, I thought of some of my posts on health literacy…
There are multiple costs to non-compliance, including financial, both personal and societal, and physical-emotional. When patients fail to comply with treatment protocols, fail to get prescribed tests, or fail to stop destructive behaviors, there is a societal cost.
Today, I want to address the physical and emotional costs of non-compliance. I just read a brilliant article by Roxanne Sukol, MD. Dr. Sukol’s article discussed the fact that diabetes starts 10 years prior to your doctor making a diagnosis and, if addressed early, often can be avoided. In her article, Dr. Sukol states, “I like my patient vertical. Not horizontal.” Most doctors have favorite sayings. My favorite is, “May you be so blessed as to never know what disease you prevented.” I’ll add Dr. Sukol’s to my favorite list.
Another one of my favorite sayings is “There is no such thing as pre-diabetes. Pre-diabetes is like being pre-pregnant.” …
This study, highlighted in a recent BHIC Blog post, is well known to following of health literacy issues.
http://www.healthfinder.gov/news/newsstory.aspx?docID=654935 Study found inability to interpret health information linked to poorer outcomes.
By Kathleen Doheny HealthDay Reporter
FRIDAY, July 22 (HealthDay News) — If you have low “health literacy,” defined as having difficulty understanding medical information, your health may be at risk. In a review of 96 published studies, researchers concluded that low health literacy is linked with many types of poorer health outcomes and poorer use of health services.
“…Expectations and assumptions about average literacy lead to a mismatch between people’s actual skills and health systems’ processes and procedures. This remains surprisingly true even after the publication and widespread dissemination of findings from the U.S. Department of Education’s national adult literacy survey in 1992 and in 2003. Findings indicated that a majority of U.S. adults have difficulty using commonly found print materials to accomplish mundane tasks with accuracy. Furthermore, they provide evidence that a large percentage of adults have difficulty applying basic math skills to everyday activities – such as determining a discount or the correct dosage for over-the-counter medicine….
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For now, I bring your attention to something we often take for granted – our work environments and the activities faced by outsiders as they try to navigate health institutions.
This blog presents a sampling of health and medical news and resources for all. Selected articles and resources will hopefully be of general interest but will also encourage further reading through posted references and other links. Currently I am focusing on public health, basic and applied research and very broadly on disease and healthy lifestyle topics.
Several times a month I will post items on international and global health issues. My Peace Corps Liberia experience (1980-81) has formed me as a global citizen in many ways and has challenged me to think of health and other topics in a more holistic manner.
Do you have an informational question in the health/medical area? Email me at jmflahiff@yahoo.com I will reply within 48 hours.
My professional work experience and education includes over 15 years experience as a medical librarian and a Master’s in Library Science. In my most recent position I enjoyed contributing to our library’s blog, performing in depth literature searches, and collaborating with faculty, staff, students, and the general public.
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