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Correlates of Health Literacy Among Polish Immigrants With Chronic Health Conditions: Preliminary Results
The rapid increase in immigration to the United States in the past decades has resulted in an influx of individuals who have to familiarize themselves with a completely new health care system and practices, often in a new language. The purpose of this study was to assess health literacy and investig...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
SAGE Publications
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8762482/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35047650 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2333721419894772 |
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author | Leszko, Magdalena Timoszyk-Tomczak, Celina |
author_facet | Leszko, Magdalena Timoszyk-Tomczak, Celina |
author_sort | Leszko, Magdalena |
collection | PubMed |
description | The rapid increase in immigration to the United States in the past decades has resulted in an influx of individuals who have to familiarize themselves with a completely new health care system and practices, often in a new language. The purpose of this study was to assess health literacy and investigate its correlates among older U.S. Polish immigrants living in the Greater Chicago area. We conducted a cross-sectional study on 60 older adults (24 men, 36 women; mean age = 71.1 years) who completed the Short Test of Functional Health Literacy (S-TOFHLA) and a demographic survey. Scores on S-TOFHLA were lower among older and less-educated immigrants. Undocumented immigrants reported using health care services less frequently than those with legal status. These results confirm the findings of previous studies that older age and fewer years of education are associated with inadequate health literacy. Being familiar with at least the basic information about one’s condition will help patients to better understand a diagnosis, manage their symptoms, and improve any preventive treatment. The findings emphasize the importance of health education among older Polish immigrants. More research employing diverse groups of immigrants is needed to better understand the factors associated with health literacy. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8762482 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | SAGE Publications |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-87624822022-01-18 Correlates of Health Literacy Among Polish Immigrants With Chronic Health Conditions: Preliminary Results Leszko, Magdalena Timoszyk-Tomczak, Celina Gerontol Geriatr Med Aging and Diverse Race and Ethnic Populations The rapid increase in immigration to the United States in the past decades has resulted in an influx of individuals who have to familiarize themselves with a completely new health care system and practices, often in a new language. The purpose of this study was to assess health literacy and investigate its correlates among older U.S. Polish immigrants living in the Greater Chicago area. We conducted a cross-sectional study on 60 older adults (24 men, 36 women; mean age = 71.1 years) who completed the Short Test of Functional Health Literacy (S-TOFHLA) and a demographic survey. Scores on S-TOFHLA were lower among older and less-educated immigrants. Undocumented immigrants reported using health care services less frequently than those with legal status. These results confirm the findings of previous studies that older age and fewer years of education are associated with inadequate health literacy. Being familiar with at least the basic information about one’s condition will help patients to better understand a diagnosis, manage their symptoms, and improve any preventive treatment. The findings emphasize the importance of health education among older Polish immigrants. More research employing diverse groups of immigrants is needed to better understand the factors associated with health literacy. SAGE Publications 2019-12-14 /pmc/articles/PMC8762482/ /pubmed/35047650 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2333721419894772 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) ) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
spellingShingle | Aging and Diverse Race and Ethnic Populations Leszko, Magdalena Timoszyk-Tomczak, Celina Correlates of Health Literacy Among Polish Immigrants With Chronic Health Conditions: Preliminary Results |
title | Correlates of Health Literacy Among Polish Immigrants With Chronic Health Conditions: Preliminary Results |
title_full | Correlates of Health Literacy Among Polish Immigrants With Chronic Health Conditions: Preliminary Results |
title_fullStr | Correlates of Health Literacy Among Polish Immigrants With Chronic Health Conditions: Preliminary Results |
title_full_unstemmed | Correlates of Health Literacy Among Polish Immigrants With Chronic Health Conditions: Preliminary Results |
title_short | Correlates of Health Literacy Among Polish Immigrants With Chronic Health Conditions: Preliminary Results |
title_sort | correlates of health literacy among polish immigrants with chronic health conditions: preliminary results |
topic | Aging and Diverse Race and Ethnic Populations |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8762482/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35047650 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2333721419894772 |
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