Assessment of functional health literacy in Brazilian carers of older people

Individuals with low health literacy have less knowledge of their own health condition. Carers play a key role in older people’s activities of daily living. OBJECTIVE: to evaluate the performance of carers of older people using the S-TOFHLA (Short Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults) and to identify caregiver characteristics associated with low functional health literacy. METHODS: a cross-sectional study was conducted. The S-TOFHLA, a sociodemographic instrument, the Mini-Mental State Exam and the Patient Health Questionnaire-2 were applied to 80 carers of older patients routinely followed by doctors from the Primary Health Care Sector of the City of Botucatu, São Paulo. The multivariate analysis used an ordinal logistic regression model with test (S-TOFHLA) scores as the dependent variable. The level of statistical significance adopted was 0.05. RESULTS: the individuals had a mean age of 54.6 (± 11.7); 27% of the carers evaluated had inadequate levels of health literacy (S-TOFHLA ≥54). A higher proportion of individuals with low education had inadequate or marginal health literacy (p<0.001). CONCLUSION: nearly 1/3 of the carers had marginal or inadequate levels of health literacy. These results highlight the difficulties of many carers in understanding health information.