Department of Community Health and Health Behavior, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York.
Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York.
J Rural Health. 2019 Jun;35(3):405-417. doi: 10.1111/jrh.12335. Epub 2018 Nov 16.
PURPOSE: Rural residents may have lower access to and use of certain health information sources relative to urban residents. We investigated differences in information source access and use between rural and urban US adults and whether having low health literacy might exacerbate rural disparities in access to and use of health information. METHODS: Six hundred participants (50% rural) completed an online survey about access and use of 25 health information sources. We used logistic regression models to test associations between rurality and access to and use of health information sources and whether rurality interacted with health literacy to predict the access and use. FINDINGS: Compared to urban residents, rural residents had lower access to health information from sources including primary care providers, specialist doctors, blogs, and magazines, and less use of search engines. After accounting for sociodemographics, rural residents only had lower access to specialist doctors than urban residents. Rural residents with limited health literacy had lower access to mass media and scientific literature but higher use of corporations/companies than rural residents with adequate health literacy and urban residents regardless of health literacy level. CONCLUSIONS: Some differences in access to and use of health information sources may be accounted for by sociodemographic differences between rural and urban populations. There may be structural barriers such as shortage of specialist doctors and limited media exposure that make it harder for rural residents to access health information, especially those with limited health literacy.
目的:与城市居民相比,农村居民可能获得和使用某些健康信息来源的机会较少。我们调查了美国农村和城市成年人在信息来源获取和使用方面的差异,以及健康素养水平较低是否会加剧农村地区在获取和使用健康信息方面的差距。
方法:600 名参与者(50%来自农村)完成了一项关于获取和使用 25 种健康信息来源的在线调查。我们使用逻辑回归模型来检验城乡之间获取和使用健康信息来源的差异,以及健康素养是否与城乡之间的差异相互作用,从而预测获取和使用情况。
结果:与城市居民相比,农村居民获取健康信息的来源较少,包括初级保健提供者、专科医生、博客和杂志,并且使用搜索引擎的频率也较低。在考虑了社会人口统计学因素后,农村居民仅比城市居民更难从专科医生那里获得健康信息。健康素养有限的农村居民获取大众媒体和科学文献的机会较少,但与健康素养足够的农村居民和无论健康素养水平如何的城市居民相比,他们更倾向于使用公司/企业。
结论:城乡人口在社会人口统计学方面的差异可能导致在获取和使用健康信息来源方面存在一些差异。可能存在结构性障碍,如专科医生短缺和媒体接触有限,这使得农村居民更难获取健康信息,尤其是那些健康素养有限的农村居民。
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