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Background: Although health literacy was considered to play a crucial role in non-communicable chronic disease (NCD) prevention and control, the relationship of health literacy and medication adherence has rarely given attention among older adult Chinese population in previous studies, especially considered that they might be with cognitive impairment. Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the association between health literacy and medication adherence and mediation by cognitive ability among community-based older adults with chronic disease in Beijing of China. Methods: The older adults aged 60 years old or over were recruited in a cross-sectional survey conducted in Beijing of China by using multistage, stratified sampling method. Of those, the participants with chronic disease and need to take long-term medicine were included in our study. The information about sociodemographic characteristics, health literacy, cognition ability, and medication adherence was collected by the questionnaire. The univariate and multiple logistic regression analysis were used to measure the association of health literacy and adherence medication, and mediate effect by cognitive ability. Results: : 0.982-0.993] controlling other covariates. However, their association tended to be weakened or even disappeared among the older adults with cognitive impairment compared with the populations with normal cognitive. Conclusion: Improving health literacy might be a public health strategy to increase the medication adherence of older adults, but need to first identify the potential target population based on their cognitive ability.
Jia et al. (Tue,) studied this question.