Health literacy among Indian adults seeking dental care

Abstract

Background: Poor literacy can impede one’s ability not only to seek out needed health information but also to process, understand and use it to make appropriate health care decisions. The objective of the study was to assess the health literacy among adult patients seeking oral health care at in a private dental hospital in Bangalore, Karnataka, India.

Materials and Methods: A cross sectional questionnaire survey was carried out on 500 subjects. The questionnaire designed by Chew and colleagues (2004) was modifi ed and used as the survey instrument. To be eligible to participate in the study, the participants had to be aged above 18 years and able to read or write English/Kannada (local language). Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Student’s t-test (two tailed, independent) was used to fi nd the signifi cance of study parameters at 95% confi dence interval.

Results: About 60.4% of the subjects had low health literacy level, 29.4% average and only 10.2% had high health literacy levels. Age and educational qualifi cation had a suggestive signifi cant difference with the mean health literacy scores while gender did not have any signifi cant difference. Subjects who had completed post-graduation (57.8%) too had low health literacy levels.

Conclusion: A large number of patients have low levels of health literacy that may interfere with their ability to process and understand basic health information.

Key Words: Health information, health literacy, health providers