IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v18y2021i15p7918-d602007.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Health Literacy and Frailty in Community-Dwelling Older Adults: Evidence from a Nationwide Cohort Study in South Korea

Author

Listed:
  • Hye-Ri Shin

    (Department of Gerontology, Graduate School of East-West Medical Science, Kyung Hee University, Yongin 17104, Korea)

  • Eun-Young Choi

    (Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA)

  • Su-Kyung Kim

    (AgeTech-Service Convergence Major, Graduate School of East-West Medical Science, Kyung Hee University, Yongin 17104, Korea)

  • Hee-Yun Lee

    (School of Social Work, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA)

  • Young-Sun Kim

    (AgeTech-Service Convergence Major, Graduate School of East-West Medical Science, Kyung Hee University, Yongin 17104, Korea)

Abstract

Health literacy is closely associated with poor health outcomes and mortality. However, only a handful of studies have examined the association between health literacy and frailty status. The current study used data from a nationwide sample of Korean adults aged 70–84 collected from 10 cities, each of which represents a different region of South Korea ( n = 1521). We used the propensity score matching (PSM) method to minimize the potential selection bias and confounding factors that are present in observational studies. After PSM, demographic and health-related characteristics between the limited health literacy ( n = 486) and the nonlimited health literacy ( n = 486) groups were not significantly different. Multinomial logistic regression analyses were conducted for the PSM-matched sample to examine the association between health literacy and frailty outcomes, where the robust group was set as a reference. Limited health literacy significantly increased the risk of pre-frailty (RRR = 1.45, p = 0.02) and frailty (RRR = 2.03, p = 0.01) after adjusting for demographic and health-related factors. Our findings underscore the need to foster health literacy programs and provide preliminary evidence to inform tailored intervention programs so that we might attenuate the risk of frailty in the older population.

Suggested Citation

  • Hye-Ri Shin & Eun-Young Choi & Su-Kyung Kim & Hee-Yun Lee & Young-Sun Kim, 2021. "Health Literacy and Frailty in Community-Dwelling Older Adults: Evidence from a Nationwide Cohort Study in South Korea," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(15), pages 1-10, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:15:p:7918-:d:602007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/15/7918/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/15/7918/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hae Sagong & Ju Young Yoon, 2021. "Pathways among Frailty, Health Literacy, Acculturation, and Social Support of Middle-Aged and Older Korean Immigrants in the USA," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(3), pages 1-11, January.
    2. King, Gary & Nielsen, Richard, 2019. "Why Propensity Scores Should Not Be Used for Matching," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(4), pages 435-454, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chia-Hui Wang & Wen-Pei Chang & Su-Ru Chen & Wan-Ju Cheng & Kuei-Ru Chou & Li-Chung Pien, 2022. "Health Literacy and Exercise to Treat Frailty in Community-Dwelling Older Adults: A National Survey Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(14), pages 1-10, July.
    2. Chun-Wang Wei & Hao-Yun Kao & Wen-Hsiung Wu & Chien-Yu Chen & Hsin-Pin Fu, 2021. "The Influence of Robot-Assisted Learning System on Health Literacy and Learning Perception," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(21), pages 1-15, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christophe Loussouarn & Carine Franc & Yann Videau & Julien Mousquès, 2021. "Can General Practitioners Be More Productive? The Impact of Teamwork and Cooperation with Nurses on GP Activities," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(3), pages 680-698, March.
    2. Bryan Roberts & Fynnwin Prager & Charles Baschnagel & Adam Rose & Brett Shears, 2021. "The economic benefits of trade facilitation: U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Centers of Excellence and Expertise programme," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(2), pages 346-366, February.
    3. Philipp vom Berge & Achim Schmillen, 2023. "Effects of mass layoffs on local employment—evidence from geo-referenced data," Journal of International Economic Law, Oxford University Press, vol. 23(3), pages 509-539.
    4. Takahashi, Ryo, 2021. "How to stimulate environmentally friendly consumption: Evidence from a nationwide social experiment in Japan to promote eco-friendly coffee," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    5. Camboni, Riccardo & Corsini, Alberto & Miniaci, Raffaele & Valbonesi, Paola, 2021. "Mapping fuel poverty risk at the municipal level. A small-scale analysis of Italian Energy Performance Certificate, census and survey data," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    6. Masaya NISHIHATA & Hidenori TAHARA & Yohei KOBAYASHI, 2023. "Does Sending Teachers Abroad Enhance Their Quality and Ability?," Discussion papers 23055, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    7. Florian Gunsilius & Yuliang Xu, 2021. "Matching for causal effects via multimarginal unbalanced optimal transport," Papers 2112.04398, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2022.
    8. Akoh Fabien Yao & Maxime Sèbe & Laura Recuero Virto & Abdelhak Nassiri & Hervé Dumez, 2024. "The effect of LNG bunkering on port competitiveness using multilevel data analysis [L'effet du soutage par GNL sur la compétitivité des ports à l'aide de l'analyse de données à plusieurs niveaux]," Post-Print hal-04611804, HAL.
    9. Gavious, Ilanit & Livne, Gilad & Chen, Ester, 2022. "Does tax avoidance increase or decrease when tax enforcement is stronger? Evidence using CSR heterogeneity perspective," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    10. Alloush, Mo & Bloem, Jeffrey R., 2022. "Neighborhood violence, poverty, and psychological well-being," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    11. Mohammad Mahfuzur Rahman Bhuiyan & Keshav Lall Maharjan, 2022. "Impact of Farmer Field School on Crop Income, Agroecology, and Farmer’s Behavior in Farming: A Case Study on Cumilla District in Bangladesh," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-20, April.
    12. Pates, Nicholas J. & Kim, GwanSeon & Mark, Tyler B. & Ritter, Matthias, 2020. "Windfalls or wind falls? The Local Effects of Turbine Development on US Agricultural Land Values," 2020 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, Kansas City, Missouri 304611, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    13. Qi Guo & Lawrence Kryzanowski & Mingyang Li & Jie Zhang, 2021. "Share‐loan pledging and relaxation of share‐repurchase restrictions in China," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(5), pages 5925-5964, December.
    14. Mohamed Ali Marouani & Michelle Marshalian, 2020. "Winners and losers in industrial policy 2.0," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2020-21, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    15. Xueli Wang & Yen Lee & Xiwei Zhu & Ayse Okur Ozdemir, 2022. "Exploring the Relationship Between Community College Students’ Exposure to Math Contextualization and Educational Outcomes," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 63(2), pages 309-336, March.
    16. Riccardo Turati, 2025. "Networks abroad and culture: global individual-level evidence," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 38(1), pages 1-42, March.
    17. Coulibaly, Yacouba, 2025. "The effects of resource-backed loans on deforestation: Evidence from developing countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    18. Ravi Bapna & Alok Gupta & Gautam Ray & Shweta Singh, 2023. "Single-Sourcing vs. Multisourcing: An Empirical Analysis of Large Information Technology Outsourcing Arrangements," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 34(3), pages 1109-1130, September.
    19. Maria Abreu & Özge Öner, 2020. "Disentangling the Brexit vote: The role of economic, social and cultural contexts in explaining the UK’s EU referendum vote," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(7), pages 1434-1456, October.
    20. Allan Webster & Sangeeta Khorana & Francesco Pastore, 2021. "The labour market impact of COVID-19: early evidence for a sample of enterprises from Southern Europe," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 43(4), pages 1054-1082, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:15:p:7918-:d:602007. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.