PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARIES

What is this study about?

The heart of this study is an examination of the fact that the socio-economic factors that shape population health also appear to be related to literacy levels and practices as well as to how people acquire information. This, the authors conclude, is especially true for the seniors population.

Chapter 1 reviews the existing literature on the socio-economic factors affecting health and supplements this with the authors own research based on the 1994 Canadian National Population Health Survey (NPHS). The authors’ findings support the existing literature by confirming the link between health status and two socio-economic variables in particular: income and education. It also suggests that some of the relationships between certain of these factors and health can vary by age group.

The unique situation of seniors, those aged 65 and older, is explored in detail. Chapter 2 examines variations in literacy skills and practices and in patterns of information acquisition among seniors using Canadian data from the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) 1994.

There is also a concluding chapter that supports the view that seniors with low literacy skills are more likely to have health problems than are seniors with higher literacy abilities. They call for direct measures of health and health activities in conjunction with literacy measurement and assessment especially for Canada’s senior population, and they argue that there is a pressing need to consider literacy as an important policy issue for health promotion.