What You Can't Read Can Kill You
Low health literacy can spell death for the elderly, a new study says.
July 24, 2007 — -- Mabel Hoffman has a routine when she goes to the doctor.
"I always take a pencil and paper with me, because it's hard to remember certain things," she said. "I also take my husband or my daughter with me to help me remember and ask questions."
Hoffman, 79, is one of the millions of aging Americans who work hard to stay healthy and keep medical instructions straight.
A new study, released Monday in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine, suggests that elderly people who can't navigate health information have a 50 percent higher chance of dying earlier than those who are able to comprehend prescription bottles, doctor appointment slips and hospital forms.
"People are dying because they're not understanding health information," said Dr. David Baker, the study's lead author. "There are a number of factors, but inadequate literacy is probably acting like a lens, focusing all the other factors in."
The researchers at Northwestern University interviewed 3,260 Medicare patients ages 65 and older. They asked the patients about their ethnicity, education, income, health behaviors and medical conditions. Then, the patients took tests designed to assess their health literacy.
Five years later, the reviewers determined which patients had died by matching their names against the National Death Index.
They found that low health literacy was a strong predictor for early death, second only to smoking, surpassing income level and years of education.
"These people are less likely to know what their diseases are and less likely to know how to take care of themselves," Baker said. "They're more likely to be hospitalized. Eventually, the low literacy is going to affect their health." Baker thinks this is why they are much more likely to die.
According to the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy, more than 75 million Americans have only basic or below basic health literacy. The National Academy on Aging Society estimated that the inability to understand medical directions costs more than $73 billion in health costs per year.
