Low health literacy and multiple medications in community-dwelling older adults: a population-based cohort study.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

Adequate health literacy is important for patients to manage chronic diseases and medications. We examined the association between health literacy and multiple medications in community-dwelling adults aged 50 years and older in England.

Design, settings and participants

We included 6368 community-dwelling people of median age 66 years from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Health literacy was assessed at wave 5 (2010/11) with 4 questions concerning a medication label. Four correct answers were categorised as adequate health literacy, otherwise low. Data on medications were collected at wave 6 (2012/13). To examine the difference in the number of medications between low and adequate health literacy, we used zero-inflated negative binomial regression, estima

SUBMITTER: Shebehe J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8860035 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature