Lower health literacy is associated with poorer health status and outcomes in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
BACKGROUND
Limited health literacy is associated with poor outcomes in many chronic diseases, but little is known about health literacy in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).


OBJECTIVE
To examine the associations between health literacy and both outcomes and health status in COPD. PARTICIPANTS, DESIGN AND MAIN MEASURES: Structured interviews were administered to 277 subjects with self-report of physician-diagnosed COPD, recruited through US random-digit telephone dialing. Health literacy was measured with a validated three-item battery. Multivariable linear regression, controlling for sociodemographics including income and education, determined the cross-sectional associations between health literacy and COPD-related health status: COPD Severity Score, COPD Helplessness Index, and Airways Questionnaire-20R [measuring respiratory-specific health-related quality of life (HRQoL)]. Multivariable logistic regression estimated associations between health literacy and COPD-related hospitalizations and emergency department (ED) visits.


RESULTS
Taking socioeconomic status into account, poorer health literacy (lowest tertile compared to highest tertile) was associated with: worse COPD severity (+2.3 points; 95 % CI 0.3-4.4); greater COPD helplessness (+3.7 points; 95 % CI 1.6-5.8); and worse respiratory-specific HRQoL (+3.5 points; 95 % CI 1.8-4.9). Poorer health literacy, also controlling for the same covariates, was associated with higher likelihood of COPD-related hospitalizations (OR = 6.6; 95 % CI 1.3-33) and COPD-related ED visits (OR = 4.7; 95 % CI 1.5-15). Analyses for trend across health literacy tertiles were statistically significant (p < 0.05) for all above outcomes.


CONCLUSIONS
Independent of socioeconomic status, poor health literacy is associated with greater COPD severity, greater COPD helplessness, worse respiratory-specific HRQoL, and higher odds of COPD-related emergency health-care utilization. These results underscore that COPD patients with poor health literacy may be at particular risk for poor health-related outcomes.
Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94118, USA. omachi@ucsf.edu
Theodore A
TA
Omachi
Urmimala
U
Sarkar
Edward H
EH
Yelin
Paul D
PD
Blanc
Patricia P
PP
Katz
D000368:Aged; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D057220:Health Literacy / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006760:Hospitalization / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011379:Prognosis; D029424:Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D011788:Quality of Life; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014481:United States