Health Literacy Assessment Tools in Patients with Diabetes

Abstract

Introduction: The term health literacy (HL) implies the attainment of a level of knowledge, personal skills and trust, so
that individuals themselves can take action to improve personal and community health, changing personal lifestyle and
living conditions. In the care of chronic diseases, such as Diabetes, low HL is a potential obstacle to self-management of
individuals, as a lack of understanding of written or oral health guidance and counseling leads people with Diabetes,
to receive degraded health care. Purpose: The aim of the present study was to investigate and describe tools available,
which are used to evaluate HL in individuals with Diabetes. Material and Method: A systematic review was conducted
to search in the electronic databases "Google Scholar "," PubMed "and SUM Search, with index words health literacy,
diabetes, assessment tools. The research was conducted with specific criteria for inclusion and exclusion and included
studies in English, published in the period 2010–2020, as well as articles that included the initial research of the measuring tools. 103 articles were found and seven were used. Results: There are several reliable tools for measuring HL and
assessing the ability to understand the disease, which have been developed and are constantly improving, while new
ones are constantly being developed. They are divided into three main categories, which measure the ability of people
with Diabetes to: (1) read written words, (2) understand written speech and (3) understand and perform arithmetic
calculations. The ability to read, understand and count orally is related to knowledge about the disease of people with
Diabetes. Conclusions: People with Diabetes need the ability to pronounce and understand the oral instructions of health professionals, as well as sufficient ability to handle numerical and quantitative data related to disease management. However, due to the complexity of the disease, although there are several valuable tools for evaluating HL in
Diabetes, there is currently no single tool that includes and covers all the dimensions of HL. It is necessary to develop
a new tool, simple, short, useful and without exclusions.