Study Links Health Literacy, Death Rates
People who have a hard time understanding health information and services are said to have low “health literacy.” A new study finds that they tend to be older, poorer, less educated, in poorer health â and more likely to die early. The study looked at 1,500 people with heart failure. All of them had the same health insurance, a managed care plan. Using a survey, researchers concluded that 17.6% had poor health literacy. Researchers kept track of people for more than a year. In that time, 124 died. This included almost 18% of those with low health literacy and 6% of the others. People with low health literacy also were more likely to have a hospital stay. The Journal of the American Medical Association published the study. HealthDay News wrote about it April 26.