Towards an understanding of the relationship of functional literacy and numeracy to geographical health inequalities

Abstract

The relative contributions of functional literacy and functional numeracy to health disparities remain poorly understood in developed world contexts. We seek to unpack their distinctive contributions and to examine how these contributions are framed by place-based deprivation and rurality. We present a multilevel logistic analysis of the 2011 Skills for Life Survey (SfLS), a representative governmental survey of adults aged 16-65 in England. Outcome measures were self-assessed health status and the presence of self-reported long-term health conditions. Exposure variables were functional literacy (FL) and functional numeracy (FN).Age, sex, individual socio-economic status, ethnicity, whether English was a first language, non-UK birthplaces, housing tenure and geography were included as potential confounders and mediators. Geography was measured as area-based deprivation and urban/rural status. FL and FN were both independently associated with self-assessed health status, though the association attenuated after taking account of confounders and mediators. For long-term conditions, the association with FN remained significant following inclusion of confounders and mediators whilst FL attenuated to non-significance. Rurality did not influence these associations. Area deprivation was a significant factor in attenuating the association between FL and self-assessed health status. Policy makers and health professionals will need to be aware of the distinctive impact of FN as well as FL when combating health inequalities, promoting health and managing long-term conditions.

Disease-specific health literacy, disease knowledge, and adherence behavior among patients with type 2 diabetes in Taiwan

“…The numeracy items included medication adherence, reading and comprehension of the prescription and drug label, and medication expiration awareness. Though no association between poor numeracy skills and adherence behavior was found in this study, other studies have shown poor numeracy skills to be associated with medication adherence failure and poor health [ 20 , 47 , 48 ]. Most studies conflate the concepts of health literacy and health knowledge [ 49 ].…”

Development of a health literacy questionnaire for Taiwanese hemodialysis patients

“…The bivariate analysis showed that the five demographic variables of age, education level, primary language, primary caregiver identity, and willingness to receive a transplant are associated with the overall health literacy of hemodialysis patients. The association of age and overall health literacy is consistent with the existing literature, which indicates that older patients tend to have poorer health literacy [ 23 ]. Furthermore, the findings of better health literacy in more educated patients are also consistent with existing literature.…”

Human Factor in Food Label Design to Support Consumer Healthcare and Safety: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Consumers' ability to correctly understand information shown on product labels can be essential for health and safety [1] or to simply make an informed choice regarding sustainability, respective of personal principles and values [2][3][4]. Indeed, informed decision-making depends on people's ability "to accurately evaluate and understand information about risk" related to a product or a situation [5].…”

“…For this purpose, a good drug label design could be based on expertise and sound human-centred design principles [12]. Three aims can be attributed to labelling of food products [13]: (1) information Is "human factor" applied to "label" design in the current scientific scenario? What are the fields in which these concepts have been most explored?…”