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Health Literacy in the Everyday Lives of Older Adults in Greece, Hungary, and the Netherlands

Health literacy (HL) encompasses someone’s knowledge and abilities to access and use health information in order to make appropriate health decisions in life. HL is particularly valuable in later life when health challenges grow. An individual’s HL is typically considered a fixed and skills-based ch...

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Autores principales: de Wit, Liesbeth, Karnaki, Pania, Dalma, Archontoula, Csizmadia, Peter, Salter, Charlotte, de Winter, Andrea, Meijering, Louise
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7177367/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32252281
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17072411
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author de Wit, Liesbeth
Karnaki, Pania
Dalma, Archontoula
Csizmadia, Peter
Salter, Charlotte
de Winter, Andrea
Meijering, Louise
author_facet de Wit, Liesbeth
Karnaki, Pania
Dalma, Archontoula
Csizmadia, Peter
Salter, Charlotte
de Winter, Andrea
Meijering, Louise
author_sort de Wit, Liesbeth
collection PubMed
description Health literacy (HL) encompasses someone’s knowledge and abilities to access and use health information in order to make appropriate health decisions in life. HL is particularly valuable in later life when health challenges grow. An individual’s HL is typically considered a fixed and skills-based characteristic, without taking into account how these are situated in the context of everyday life. Also, lay perspectives on health literacy are relatively scarce. Therefore, the aim of this article is to explore the context-specific perspectives of older adults and health professionals on HL in later life in Greece, Hungary, and the Netherlands. We adopted a qualitative methodology and conducted 12 focus groups: seven with 50 older adults and five with 30 health professionals to gain insight into individual perspectives on HL as situated in the health care and everyday life contexts. An informed grounded theory approach was used in analyzing the data. The results are structured in three themes: (1) interactions with health professionals, (2) perceived quality of the health care system, and (3) managing health in the context of everyday life. An overarching finding is that, for older adults, HL reflects the demands placed on them when managing their health. In the experience of older adults, these demands are placed upon them by healthcare professionals, the healthcare system, as well as their everyday lives. Our findings underscore the importance of Critical Health Literacy (CHL) as that concept foregrounds that HL is context specific. Also, CHL has been argued to be a community characteristic, which is why we call for community-based approaches to improve HL.
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spelling pubmed-71773672020-04-28 Health Literacy in the Everyday Lives of Older Adults in Greece, Hungary, and the Netherlands de Wit, Liesbeth Karnaki, Pania Dalma, Archontoula Csizmadia, Peter Salter, Charlotte de Winter, Andrea Meijering, Louise Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Health literacy (HL) encompasses someone’s knowledge and abilities to access and use health information in order to make appropriate health decisions in life. HL is particularly valuable in later life when health challenges grow. An individual’s HL is typically considered a fixed and skills-based characteristic, without taking into account how these are situated in the context of everyday life. Also, lay perspectives on health literacy are relatively scarce. Therefore, the aim of this article is to explore the context-specific perspectives of older adults and health professionals on HL in later life in Greece, Hungary, and the Netherlands. We adopted a qualitative methodology and conducted 12 focus groups: seven with 50 older adults and five with 30 health professionals to gain insight into individual perspectives on HL as situated in the health care and everyday life contexts. An informed grounded theory approach was used in analyzing the data. The results are structured in three themes: (1) interactions with health professionals, (2) perceived quality of the health care system, and (3) managing health in the context of everyday life. An overarching finding is that, for older adults, HL reflects the demands placed on them when managing their health. In the experience of older adults, these demands are placed upon them by healthcare professionals, the healthcare system, as well as their everyday lives. Our findings underscore the importance of Critical Health Literacy (CHL) as that concept foregrounds that HL is context specific. Also, CHL has been argued to be a community characteristic, which is why we call for community-based approaches to improve HL. MDPI 2020-04-02 2020-04 /pmc/articles/PMC7177367/ /pubmed/32252281 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17072411 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
de Wit, Liesbeth
Karnaki, Pania
Dalma, Archontoula
Csizmadia, Peter
Salter, Charlotte
de Winter, Andrea
Meijering, Louise
Health Literacy in the Everyday Lives of Older Adults in Greece, Hungary, and the Netherlands
title Health Literacy in the Everyday Lives of Older Adults in Greece, Hungary, and the Netherlands
title_full Health Literacy in the Everyday Lives of Older Adults in Greece, Hungary, and the Netherlands
title_fullStr Health Literacy in the Everyday Lives of Older Adults in Greece, Hungary, and the Netherlands
title_full_unstemmed Health Literacy in the Everyday Lives of Older Adults in Greece, Hungary, and the Netherlands
title_short Health Literacy in the Everyday Lives of Older Adults in Greece, Hungary, and the Netherlands
title_sort health literacy in the everyday lives of older adults in greece, hungary, and the netherlands
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7177367/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32252281
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17072411
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