The Relation between Health Literacy and Cataract Screening in Elderly People, Kalasin Province, Thailand

Vision impairment in elderly people due to cataract commonly affect including falls, confusion and reduced quality of life. Cataract screening may help in reducing their living with sight loss. This cross-sectional study aimed to study the relation between health literacy and cataract screening inelderly. Multi-stage random sampling was used to obtain data from 438 elderly people in Kalasin province. Interviewing was used for data collection. Descriptive statistic and logistic regression analyses were performed to investigate the relation between health literacy and the attendance of the cataract screening in elderly. The results revealed that 44.06% of elderly attending a cataract screening. The percentage of cataract screening attendance was greater among female (OR=2.29, 95% CI = 1.53-3.41), aged between 70-79 (OR=1.83, 95% CI = 1.22 to 2.74), with underlying disease (OR=5.45, 95% CI = 3.61 to 8.23), having annual health checkup (OR=5.21, 95% CI = 2.83 to 9.60) and distance from home to hospital less than 1 km (OR=1.77, 95% CI = 1.08-2.92). The attendance of cataract screening had significantly associated with health literacy at a good level of each skill which were access to information and services (OR= 2.42, 95% CI = 1.49 to 3.95), communication skills with professionals (OR= 2.42, 95% CI = 1.45 to 4.03), Self-management (OR= 1.90, 95% CI =1.19 to 3.04), media and information literacy (OR= 1.74, 95% CI = 1.10 to 2.75), decision-making skill (OR= 3.15, 95% CI = 1.82 to 5.46).

Therefore, to be successful in promoting public health and interventions to increase the coverage of cataract screening and the prevention blindness in the elderly, the measures should be concerned with the sociological gap, accessibility and especially, health literacy towards cataract.