Investigating the relationship between health literacy status and self-care ability among elderly with hypertension referred to selected specialized social security polyclinics

As the population ages, chronic diseases increase and the elderly who have insufficient health literacy are one of the risk groups related to high blood pressure. This study was conducted with the aim of determining the relationship between health literacy and self-care ability in the elderly with hypertension.

The current study is a cross-sectional study that was conducted on 301 elderly people who referred to specialized polyclinics of social security in Tehran in 2021. The data was collected by simple sampling method using short cognitive test tools, self-care ability questionnaire of elderly people, health literacy questionnaire of Iranians. Then it was analyzed by descriptive statistics, frequency distribution table and inferential and correlation statistical tests with SPSS version 22 software.

The mean and standard deviation of the age of the participants was 68.88 ± 7.2 years. The mean and standard deviation of the self-care index of people is 58.51 ± 9.1 and the mean and standard deviation of the health literacy score is 110.74 ± 33.98. Pearson correlation analysis showed a positive and significant relationship between the two variables of health literacy level and self-care ability (p>0.001). Also, the average score of health literacy for men was significantly higher than that of women (P=0.001).

The results show that interventions to improve health literacy are important to increase the ability of self-care behaviors in the elderly, it is necessary to improve health literacy in the elderly with high blood pressure and provide them with intervention and educational information.