Why a literacy program in a health care facility?

Southwest Boulevard Family Health Care is a comprehensive provider of health care and social services to the poorest neighborhoods in Kansas City. Several years ago, as part of our quality review, we noted that many of our patients were not properly taking medications, or adhering to other medical recommendations. We found the lack of compliance with important recommendations was closely associated with poor health outcomes and starts with poor literacy.

Our findings are similar to those of researchers at Northwestern University who found a strong correlation with low health literacy and higher death rates when they followed more than 3,000 medicare enrollees in four cities for six years. Their study showed that illiteracy is an independent risk factor associated with higher mortality from all diseases. Among those who died due to cardiovascular disease, more than twice as many deaths were from the inadequate literacy group (19.3%) as the adequate literacy group (7.9%.) The marginal literacy group fared part-way between (16.7%.) Archives of Internal Medicine, July 2007