title: Conditions of functional health literacy of an elderly diabetics group.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  to evaluate the conditions of functional health literacy of an elderly diabetics group.
  
  
  METHODS
  cross-sectional and descriptive study, with diabetic's elderly assisted in the SUS (N = 114). The social and health conditions were evaluated as well as functional health literacy by S-TOFHLA test (short version); the simple proportions, average, standard deviation and Pearson's Chi-square were described by SPSS software (20.0) with α = 5% value.
  
  
  RESULTS
  the mean age was 67.4 years, 74.0% of the elderly were women, had up to four years of schooling; 29.8% had a long-standing illness, 64.0% reported having high blood pressure, 47.4% smoke or were smokers, 73.7% had low functional health literacy, which was associated with schooling p = 0.001.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  the low functional health literacy could be a self-care conditioning and can be influenced by low schooling because it implies to have skills to understand and make decisions aimed at self-management of health.
authors: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Enfermagem, Universidade do Estado do Pará, Belém, PA, Brazil.
authors: Maria Izabel Penha de Oliveira
authors: MI
authors: Santos
authors: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Envelhecimento Humano, Universidade de Passo Fundo, Passo Fundo, RS, Brazil.
authors: Marilene Rodrigues
authors: MR
authors: Portella
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D032882:Comprehension; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D057220:Health Literacy; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012648:Self Care