Hispanics' Health Care Literacy: Language Barrier or Educational Barrier?

Title:

Hispanics’ health care literacy: language barrier or educational barrier?

Objectives:

1. Determine that health care illiteracy among the Hispanic population is related to factors others than language barrier.
2. Provide health care education and information among the South Florida Hispanic population through utilization of television media.

Purpose:

Improve health care literacy among the South Florida Hispanic population through implementation of televised health care education.

Background:

Health literacy is described as the ability to acquire, process, and understand basic health information and services to make suitable health care decisions (Berkman, Sheridan, Donahue, Halpern & Crotty, 2011). Health literacy depends on the context. Even people with strong literacy skills can face health literacy challenges, such as when: people are not familiar with medical terms or how their bodies work; and when they are diagnosed with a serious illness and are scared or confused.

According to Singleton and Krause (2009) only 12 percent of U.S. adults had proficient health literacy, 77 million adult people have difficulty with common health tasks, such as following directions on a prescription drug label. Limited health literacy affects adults in all racial and ethnic groups. However, 65 percent of Hispanic adults present with basic or below basic health literacy range what represent a significant portion of the population compared with 28 percent of white adults presenting with same issue. Hispanics have lower levels of health literacy than non-Hispanics, and much of their health information comes from sources other than their health care providers (Elder, Ayala, Parra-Medina & Talavera, 2009). Among Hispanics, Mexicans and Central Americans are most likely (30%) to report having received no health information from their doctors, followed by South Americans (29%), Dominicans (25%), Cubans (22%), Puerto Ricans (19%), and all other Hispanic subgroups (16%). Therefore, Two-thirds (69%) of Latinos reported receiving health information from television. In addition, 51% of all Latinos receive health information from newspapers, 40% from radio, and 35% from the Internet. Majority of Latinos obtained health information from television or the radio report receiving it in Spanish or a mix of Spanish and English (Britigan, Murnan & Rojas-Guyler, 2009).

Significance

Low rates of health literacy is a nationwide problem linked to poor health care outcomes such as higher rates of re-hospitalization and lower adherence to medical treatments regimens, are more prominent among Hispanics than non- Hispanics.

Method

Cross sectional study using an internet questionnaire survey will be implemented asking to adult Hispanics individuals in South Florida from where they mainly acquired their health care information. Additionally, questions to determine level of health care literacy pre and post intervention will be included in the survey.

References:

Berkman, N. D., Sheridan, S. L., Donahue, K. E., Halpern, D. J., & Crotty, K. (2011). Low

health literacy and health outcomes: an updated systematic review. Annals of internal medicine, 155(2), 97-107.

Singleton, K., & Krause, E. (2009). Understanding cultural and linguistic barriers to health

literacy. OJIN: The online journal of issues in nursing, 14(3), 11.

Britigan, D. H., Murnan, J., & Rojas-Guyler, L. (2009). A qualitative study examining Latino

functional health literacy levels and sources of health information. Journal of community health, 34(3), 222-230.

Elder, J. P., Ayala, G. X., Parra-Medina, D., & Talavera, G. A. (2009). Health communication in

the Latino community: issues and approaches. Annual review of public health, 30(1), 227-251.