Bobinac Ana
Center for Health Economics and Pharmacoeconomics (CHEP), Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Rijeka, 51 000 Rijeka, Croatia.
Healthcare (Basel). 2023 Jul 6;11(13):1955. doi: 10.3390/healthcare11131955.
Health literacy is related to different health-related outcomes. However, the nature of the relationship between health literacy and health outcomes is not well understood. One pathway may lead from health literacy to health outcomes by means of access to healthcare. The goal of the current study is to explore the association between health literacy and the particular measure of access to healthcare-unmet medical need-for the first time in Croatia and, to the best of our knowledge, for the first time in the EU context. We use data obtained from face-to-face interviews in a large nationally representative sample of the Croatian population ( = 1000) to estimate the level of health literacy and self-reported access to care and investigate the association between health literacy and self-perceived barriers to access. Our study showed that limited and problematic health literacy is prevalent and associated with higher rates of unmet medical need. Unmet need is largely caused by long waiting lists. It is therefore essential to design health services fitting the needs of those who have limited and/or problematic health literacy as well as enhance health education with the potential of improving the access to care and health outcomes as well as design policies that reduce waiting times.
健康素养与不同的健康相关结果有关。然而，健康素养与健康结果之间关系的本质尚未得到很好的理解。一种途径可能是通过获得医疗保健，从健康素养通向健康结果。本研究的目的是在克罗地亚首次探索健康素养与获得医疗保健的特定指标——未满足的医疗需求之间的关联，据我们所知，也是在欧盟范围内首次进行这样的探索。我们使用从对克罗地亚具有全国代表性的大样本（n = 1000）进行面对面访谈中获得的数据，来估计健康素养水平和自我报告的获得医疗服务情况，并调查健康素养与自我感知的获得医疗服务障碍之间的关联。我们的研究表明，有限且存在问题的健康素养很普遍，并且与更高的未满足医疗需求率相关。未满足的需求很大程度上是由长长的等候名单导致的。因此，设计适合那些健康素养有限和/或存在问题的人群需求的医疗服务、加强有可能改善获得医疗服务情况和健康结果的健康教育，以及制定减少等候时间的政策至关重要。
