If You Can Read This...

Robert W. Griffith, MD

. . .you'll live longer than some Medicare patients, according to a report in the Archives of Internal Medicine. A shortened version of the Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults was used to determine if someone's health literacy was adequate, marginal, or inadequate. Health literacy is basic reading and numerical skills that allow a person to function in the health care environment.

In over 3,200 urban Medicare managed-care patients, those with marginal health literacy were 13% more likely to die during a 5-year follow-up than patients with adequate literacy. Those with inadequate health literacy were 52% more likely to die in the same period.

The inadequate-literacy group had a higher risk of cardiovascular death, but not of death due to cancer. Years of school was only weakly linked to the risk of earlier death. Reading fluency appeared to be the critical element in the association. In general, physicians seem to over-estimate the capabilities of patients in this direction - clearly with unfortunate results.

Improved education in the USA is one obvious solution. The other is the simplification of written messages and instructions, using well-known readability indices. My blog readers are expected to read at a grade level of 14 - pretty high, but you know you're smart, don't you.

Source
HealthandAge Blog

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