Low Literacy Equals Early Death Sentence

One more reason to stay in school. A new study from Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine shows that older people with inadequate health literacy had a 50 percent higher mortality rate over five years than people with adequate reading skills. Inadequate or low health literacy is defined as the inability to read and comprehend basic health-related materials such as prescription bottles, doctor appointment slips and hospital forms. "It's a matter of life or death," said David Baker, M.D., lead author of the study and chief of general internal medicine at the Feinberg School and at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. "The excess number of deaths among people with low literacy was huge. The magnitude of this shocked us." "When patients can't read, they are not able to do the things necessary to stay healthy," Baker noted. "They don't know how to take their medications correctly, they don't understand when to seek medical care, and they don't know how to care for their diseases.” Baker thinks this is why they are much more likely to die.