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Hadden KB, Prince LY, Rojo MO, et al. Screening Patients Who Speak Spanish for Low Health Literacy. Health Lit Res Pract. 2019;3(2):e110-e116doi: 10.3928/24748307-20190408-03.
Hadden, K. B., Prince, L. Y., Rojo, M. O., Selig, J. P., & McElfish, P. A. (2019). Screening Patients Who Speak Spanish for Low Health Literacy. Health literacy research and practice, 3(2), e110-e116. https://doi.org/10.3928/24748307-20190408-03
Hadden, Kristie B, et al. "Screening Patients Who Speak Spanish for Low Health Literacy." Health literacy research and practice vol. 3,2 (2019): e110-e116. doi: https://doi.org/10.3928/24748307-20190408-03
Hadden KB, Prince LY, Rojo MO, Selig JP, McElfish PA. Screening Patients Who Speak Spanish for Low Health Literacy. Health Lit Res Pract. 2019 May 31;3(2):e110-e116. doi: 10.3928/24748307-20190408-03. eCollection 2019 Apr. PMID: 31294312; PMCID: PMC6607767.
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Health Lit Res Pract. 2019 May 31;3(2):e110-e116. doi: 10.3928/24748307-20190408-03. eCollection 2019 Apr.

Screening Patients Who Speak Spanish for Low Health Literacy.

Health literacy research and practice

Kristie B Hadden, Latrina Y Prince, Martha O Rojo, James P Selig, Pearl A McElfish

PMID: 31294312 PMCID: PMC6607767 DOI: 10.3928/24748307-20190408-03

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Inadequate health literacy is a national health problem that affects about 90 million people from all racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Conceptual and empirical models of health literacy position language as one of the most significant contributors to health literacy.

OBJECTIVE: A validated Spanish health literacy screening question asks how confident patients are at filling out medical forms, but it does not clarify whether the forms are in English or in Spanish, contributing to ambiguity and potentially affecting validity. The purpose of this study was to compare responses to questions that clarified the language of the forms referenced in the validated screening question; to explore how the clarified items predicted scores on a measure of health literacy; and to compare the predictive ability of the clarified health literacy items to that of a question about patients' self-reported English proficiency.

METHODS: Participants who speak Spanish (

KEY RESULTS: Participants reported less confidence with English medical forms than Spanish forms. The sensitivity of screening approaches varied; each predicted inadequate health literacy on the NVS-Spanish and S-TOFHLA-S with different levels of sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy. In general, the HLSQ-E was a better predictor of inadequate health literacy than the HLSQ-S; however, the SEP performed nearly as well as the HLSQ-E.

CONCLUSION: "How confident are you at filling out medical forms in English…" more appropriately identified patients with inadequate health literacy who speak Spanish. Health literacy screening practices should consider the patient's language and the language of the health care system and use questions that are less ambiguous.

PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY: This project focused on patients who speak Spanish and who have a hard time understanding health information. We wanted to find out the best ways to identify these patients so that doctors and nurses can be sure to give them information in ways that they can understand. We tested screening questions that can identify these patients.

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