Effectiveness of Health Literacy Interventions on COPD Self-Management Outcomes in Outpatient Settings: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic progressive lung disease which imposes significant health and economic burdens on societies. Self-management is beneficial in controlling and managing COPD and health literacy (HL) is a major driver of COPD self-management. This review aims to summarize the most recent evidence on the effectiveness of HL driven COPD self-management interventions using randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Eight data bases including Science Citation Index, Academic Search Complete, Social Sciences Citation Index, CINAHL Plus, APA PsycInfo, MEDLINE, Scopus and ScienceDirect were searched to find eligible RCTs assessing the effectiveness of HL interventions on COPD self-management outcomes in outpatient settings between 2008 and February 2020. Ten RCTs met the eligibility criteria. The review found that HL interventions led to moderate improvements in physical activity levels (four out of seven trials) and COPD knowledge (three out of six trials). Surprisingly, none of the RCTs led to significant improvement in medication adherence, which warrants further studies. Furthermore, there were inconclusive findings regarding other COPD self-management outcomes such as smoking cessation, medication adherence, dyspnea, mental health, hospital admissions and health related quality of life.

Keywords:

• COPD
• self-management
• health literacy
• outpatient setting

Declaration of interest

The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.