Keywords: Health survey, health behavior

Background:
Low health literacy has been shown to correlate with poor health outcomes, less knowledge of health and illness management, lower compliance with therapies, more health care services use, more emergency room visits and hospitalizations, and a higher risk of death. With the increased proliferation of online health and medical information, the question arises whether e-health literacy is related to health knowledge and medical conditions among older adults. Ehealth literacy is the ability to use information technology to search, locate, process and understand health information to improve health and health care. Research found that ehealth literacy extended a health information digital divide so that younger and more educated users were more active information consumers. Previous studies showed that ehealth literacy among emerging adults were associated with healthy eating, exercise and sleep behavior. Among older adults, healthy eating, exercise and better mental health were linked to higher ehealth literacy levels. This study proposed to examine whether ehealth literacy among older adults was related to health knowledge and medical conditions.

Method: We analyzed data from the nationally representative Health Information National Trends Survey HINTS 2014 (older adults sample=1065) collected by the National Cancer Institute. Based on six components conceptualized by Norman and Skinner (2006a & 2006b), we developed a composite measure of e-health literacy – traditional literacy, health literacy, media literacy, computer literacy, information literacy and science literacy -- and examined whether health knowledge and medical conditions among adults aged 65+ interest varied among those with low and high ehealth literacy.

Results: Older adults with higher ehealth lieracy levels had better health knowledge and lower incidences of medical conditions compared to those with lower ehealth literacy scores.

Conclusions: The study supports the continued use of information technology to search for health and medical information and promote health. Since ehealth literacy can be improved through education programs, prospects for enhancing senior health is promising.