Health Literacy and Frailty in Community-Dwelling Older Adults: Evidence from a Nationwide Cohort Study in South Korea

Hye-Ri Shin, Eun-Young Choi, Su-Kyung Kim, Hee-Yun Lee and Young-Sun Kim
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Hye-Ri Shin: Department of Gerontology, Graduate School of East-West Medical Science, Kyung Hee University, Yongin 17104, Korea
Eun-Young Choi: Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA
Su-Kyung Kim: AgeTech-Service Convergence Major, Graduate School of East-West Medical Science, Kyung Hee University, Yongin 17104, Korea
Hee-Yun Lee: School of Social Work, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA
Young-Sun Kim: AgeTech-Service Convergence Major, Graduate School of East-West Medical Science, Kyung Hee University, Yongin 17104, Korea

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 15, 1-10

Abstract: Health literacy is closely associated with poor health outcomes and mortality. However, only a handful of studies have examined the association between health literacy and frailty status. The current study used data from a nationwide sample of Korean adults aged 70–84 collected from 10 cities, each of which represents a different region of South Korea ( n = 1521). We used the propensity score matching (PSM) method to minimize the potential selection bias and confounding factors that are present in observational studies. After PSM, demographic and health-related characteristics between the limited health literacy ( n = 486) and the nonlimited health literacy ( n = 486) groups were not significantly different. Multinomial logistic regression analyses were conducted for the PSM-matched sample to examine the association between health literacy and frailty outcomes, where the robust group was set as a reference. Limited health literacy significantly increased the risk of pre-frailty (RRR = 1.45, p = 0.02) and frailty (RRR = 2.03, p = 0.01) after adjusting for demographic and health-related factors. Our findings underscore the need to foster health literacy programs and provide preliminary evidence to inform tailored intervention programs so that we might attenuate the risk of frailty in the older population.

Keywords: health literacy; frailty; community-dwelling older adults; propensity score matching (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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