Health information help for women

A STUDY into the “health literacy” of Geelong women is set to deliver better health information and action for atrisk elderly and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups.

Deakin researcher Sarah Hosking led the study of 713 women involved in the Geelong osteoporosis study, who completed a health literacy questionnaire covering nine domains to document correlations between poor health outcomes and health literacy.

Dr Hosking said there had only been a handful of studies on health literacy, a broad term covering patients’ understanding of health information, their interaction and support from providers public and private and how they acted on information.

Barwon Health formed a health literacy implementation strategy reference group this year and will use the information as the evidence base to further personalise healthcare.

“We found older people tended to struggle more with health literacy, socially disadvantaged people struggled with certain domains and so did people with lower levels of education,” Dr Hosking said.

“A couple of domains that come up quite regularly were people who struggled with finding good health information and understanding that health information generally had poorer health.”

Belmont’s Avril Guley, 70, said her inquisitiveness meant she had positive experiences with the health system as she battled breast cancer, but she realised others might not have the tools to find the information they needed.

“There are people who have maybe not had good experiences with doctors and it makes them very wary and a lot of people of my age don’t get checked out even if they know there is something wrong with them,” Mrs Guley said.

“A lot of them won’t go until it’s too late.”