Abstract 18715: A Cardiovascular Health Literacy Intervention Targeting Arab Women

Abstract

Health Literacy (HL) is defined as an individual's motivation and ability to gain access to, understand and use information in ways which promote and maintain good health. Low health literacy is associated with increased cardiovascular risk factors. Arab women in Israel are at high cardiovascular risk with cardiovascular mortality that exceeds the mortality in Jewish women by 60%, and may have reduced health literacy. Objectives: To assess HL in Arab women in East Jerusalem and to design, implement and evaluate an interactive HL intervention in Arab women that will lead to an Increase in the percentage of women who utilize effective patient-doctor communication skills, increased self efficacy with regards to the patient-doctor interaction, improved comprehension of test results and increased cardiovascular knowledge. Methods: Tailored 3 session workshop. Questionnaires were administered before and 3 months after the intervention. Results: 267 women participated. 12.1% had inadequate health literacy and 24.2% had problematic health literacy. Of these women, there were matched pre/post questionnaires for 195 women. Matched participants reported increased preparatory behaviors before doctor visits including preparing symptom lists, question lists, medication lists, and medical documents (all p<.001.) They reported increased scores on the Perceived Efficacy in Patient-Physician Interactions scale (7.25 to 7.95, p<.001) , in particular in low efficacy participants who increased from 5.6 to 7.7, p<.001. Health literacy as measured on the HLS-EU-16 increased from 12.6 to 14.33 (p<.001), and 84.5% were in the sufficient range. Conclusions: A three session, tailored interactive HL workshop improved patients’ pre-visit preparation skills, self-efficacy and HL in a convenience sample of Arab women from East Jerusalem. HL can be improved with intervention and as such can be considered a modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease.