The authors conclude that their findings suggest that literacy should be treated as an important policy issue, especially in the field of health promotion, noting that the evidence is indirect for the most part. They call for direct measures of health and health activities in conjunction with literacy measurement and assessment especially for Canada’s senior population.
The study’s results, supported by both health and literacy research, indicate that many of Canada’s senior citizens suffer from poor literacy abilities. The authors conclude that these people may endanger themselves (for example, by misunderstanding instructions on medication or misreading consent forms) and may affect medical expenditures as well (for example, by misusing medical services).
In terms of overall public health, the authors conclude that the medical literature and their findings suggest that low literacy affects people’s health activities and lifestyles. They suggest that in each of these domains literacy presents itself as a potentially modifiable health policy area. Given the growing size of Canada’s senior population, the forecast of increased use of medications among senior citizens and the tendency of literacy abilities to decline for seniors, they argue that there is a pressing need to consider literacy as an important policy issue for health promotion.
Paul Roberts and Gail Fawcett
At Risk: A Socio-economic Analysis of Health and Literacy Among Seniors
Published by Statistics Canada and Human Resources Development Canada: 1998
StatsCan Catalogue # 89-552, no. 5
ISBN 0-660-17672-6
64 pages
Version 1