Community-based health information network and disease-specific health literacy

Aims: This is a study about health literacy in a community context. It introduces a new measure of disease specific health literacy that is grounded in the everyday life problem-solving dimensions of prevention and detection and examines the effect of residents' connections to community-based health information resources. People connect to health information sources that are available in their local communities, including interpersonal, media, and community organizational communication resources. These resources do not exist in isolation as they are joined into a network of health information resources through everyday communication activities, hence forming a community-based health information network. We expect to find positive relationships between residents' connections to community-based health information network (RC-CHIN) and health literacy. The primary hypothesis is that health literacy is influenced by residents' connection to RC-CHIN in addition to socio-economic status factors such as education. Methods: Telephone survey data (RDD-based) were collected from African Americans (n=304) and Hispanics (n=303) in the greater Crenshaw area in Los Angeles in 2006. Disease specific health literacy – for each of diabetes, hypertension, breast cancer, and prostate cancer – was measured as the number of correct answers for two separate questions about prevention and detection. Results: The disease specific health literacy measures were significantly related to education. RC-CHIN was found to be a significant predictor for disease specific health literacy about diabetes, breast cancer, and prostate cancer even after controlling for age, education, and gender, ethnicity, and personal/family experience of each specific disease.