Abstract
Culturally and linguistically different immigrants in the U.S. are considered populations with low health literacy in general, thereby having a high risk of negative health outcomes such as frailty. The purpose of this study is to identify the effects of social support and acculturation on the relationship between health literacy and frailty of Korean immigrants in existing models of health literacy. A total of 244 Korean immigrants aged 50 years and older residing in Southern United States (Alabama and Georgia) were recruited. Path analysis was used to examine the pathways among variables, and the indirect effects of health literacy were analyzed. The results revealed that health literacy and social support directly influenced frailty; social support and acculturation were identified to influence health literacy. Health literacy had a partial mediating effect in the relationship between social support and frailty and a complete mediating effect in the relationship between acculturation and frailty. Therefore, to prevent frailty, it is necessary to consider enhancing immigrants’ health literacy by elevating acculturation and social supports.
Highlights
Frailty is a state that is vulnerable to stressors with decreased physiological resilience, resulting in increased disability, morbidity, and mortality [1,2]
The results identified significant correlations in which acculturation and social support with Health literacy (HL) were positively correlated (r = 0.51 and r = 0.42, respectively) and frailty was negatively correlated with social support, acculturation, and HL (r = −0.25, r = −0.23, and r = −0.28, respectively)
This study demonstrated that HL and social support directly influenced frailty and This studyand demonstrated that social support directly influenced and social support acculturation influenced
Summary
Frailty is a state that is vulnerable to stressors with decreased physiological resilience, resulting in increased disability, morbidity, and mortality [1,2] It is one of the aspects of aging with the largest effect on the deterioration of independence and quality of life in older adults [3]. Predicting the starting point and progression of frailty in old age is an important index to prevent disease morbidity and poor quality of life. For this reason, the target population for measuring frailty is expanding from older adults to middle-aged adults. The systematic review of the prevalence of frailty in community-dwelling adults over 65 years of age reported that 10.7% were frail and 41.6% were prefrail [8]; among 49–65 year-old middle-aged community-dwelling
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