Investigating the health literacy of the elderly with hypertension and related factors among patients referred to the selected clinics at Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences

Hypertension increases with age. Low levels of health literacy are more common in older people with chronic diseases and hypertension, and these people are probably more affected by the unpleasant effects of low health literacy than other people in society. The aim of this study was to investigate the health literacy of the elderly with hypertension and related factors.

This descriptive-analytical correlational study was conducted in 2019. The study sample was 210 elderly people with hypertension selected among patients referred to specialized clinics using the convenience sampling method. Data were collected using demographic medical information, Abbreviated Mental Test (AMT) and Health Literacy for Iranian Adults (HELIA) questionnaire. Data were analyzed via descriptive (frequency distribution tables, mean and standard deviation) and analytical (t-test, ANOVA and Pearson) statistics using SPSS 23 and a significance level of 0.05.

According to the results, most of the elderly (58.1%) had adequate health literacy. Moreover, there was a significant inverse relationship between health literacy and age in the elderly with hypertension (p<0.05). Furthermore, there was a significant relationship between health literacy and the variables of employment status, education level, place of residence and, number of medications consumed (p<0.05).

In this study, the health literacy of the elderly with hypertension was adequate and it was found that the health literacy decreased as the elderly aged.