The Associations of Patient Demographic Characteristics and Health Information Recall: The Mediating Role of Health Literacy

ABSTRACT

We examined the mediating role of health literacy in the relationships between participant demographic characteristics and health information recall. Baseline data from two studies that focused on hypertensive adults (N = 1190; M = 62.28 years, SD = 11.98; 35.5% female; 45.9% African-American) were analyzed. The final model, which adjusted for recruitment site, indicated that financial status, race, and education were indirectly related to health information recall through health literacy. Increasing education was also directly related to better health information recall. Increasing age was not related to health literacy, but was related to poorer health information recall. The final model fit the data very well, χ²(3) = 0.69, p = .36, RMSEA = .000 (90% CI = .000 to .024),CFI = 1.00. The results suggest that health literacy might be one of the mechanisms underlying the relationships between participant demographic characteristics and poor health outcomes due to inaccurate recall of instructions.

Keywords:

• Depression
• Personality
• Neurocognitive function

BJA is supported by a post-doctoral fellowship from the VA Office of Academic Affairs. HBB is supported by an American Heart Association Established Investigator award and a VA Career Scientist Award (08-027). This research is supported by the Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Administration, HSR&D Service, investigator initiative grants 20-034 (Bosworth). The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Veterans Affairs.