Relationship of health literacy with utilization of health-care services in a general Japanese population

Abstract

Many studies have explored the association between health literacy and health-care utilization; however, the majority assessed functional health literacy in terms of basic skills. Japan's health-care and medical examination system in workplaces is different from that of other major countries. This study examined the relationship of health literacy with health-care use (emergency visit, hospitalization, dental checkup, and health checkup or cancer screening); it focused on differences by occupation and health-care service utilization among general Japanese using the communicative and critical health literacy scale. We conducted a cross-sectional observational study of 1002 Japanese residents. Through a questionnaire, we investigated socioeconomic status, health status, health-care use, and health literacy. Among all participants and non-workers, logistic regression analyses revealed that health literacy was significantly associated with health checkup or cancer screening after adjusting for sex, age, marital status, education, and having a disease or disorder (adjusted odds ratio [OR] = 1.431, 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.131–1.810; adjusted OR = 1.614, 95% CI, 1.114–2.339, respectively). Among workers, we observed no significant association between health literacy and health-care utilization. These results indicate that health literacy is closely related to use of preventive health-care. Japan's health-care system in workplaces may promote use of preventive health-care services regardless of health literacy, whereas improving health literacy may be more critical among non-workers.

Associated factors related to participation in general health checkup and survey of the effect of low-dose radiation exposure on health of residents of Fukushima Prefecture after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident

“…Previous studies that measured HL among the Japanese general population ( Ishikawa et al, 2008 , Ishikawa et al, 2016 , Goto et al, 2019 ) have reported an average CCHL score ranging from 3.59 to 3.72. Since the average score for respondents in this study was 3.11 ± 0.81, it appears that the HL of Fukushima Prefecture residents is relatively lower than that of the other population in Japan.…”

Utilization of Routine Medical Checkup and Factors Influencing Use of Routine Medical Checkup among Saudi Students Studying in the USA in 2019

“…Future research should also consider updating the validated instrument used in the present study to include questions on any new factors related to routine checkups identified in the literature since this study was undertaken. For example, a recent study found a significant association between health literacy and use of health checkup among Japanese population [32].…”

Associations Between Health Literacy and Underweight and Overweight Among Japanese Adults Aged 20 to 39 Years: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…However, we measured HL with a validated questionnaire, and categorized the HL scores into lower and higher HL groups in a manner consistent with the validation study (Ishikawa et al, 2008). Although the original validation study included only Japanese male office workers (Ishikawa et al, 2008), several studies have used this scale for both men and women (Goto et al, 2019; Ishikawa et al, 2018; Yokokawa et al, 2016). Therefore, we considered this HL scale was applicable for participants in our study.…”