The Impact Of Health Literacy On Health Outcomes In Cancer Patients Attending Inpatient Rehabilitation

Purpose Health literacy (HL) entails people's knowledge, motivation, and competences to access, understand, appraise, and apply health information. Lower HL is associated with poorer psychosocial health. However, there are no studies so far evaluating the impact of HL within oncological rehabilitation in Germany. Therefore, we explored HL in cancer patients in inpatient rehabilitation and its association with rehabilitation outcome.Methods We conducted a secondary data analysis of a questionnaire survey with 449 cancer patients (breast, prostate, and colon cancer) at 3 measurement occasions (end of rehabilitation, 3- and 9 months follow-up). We assessed HL with the European Health Literacy Survey (HLS-EU-Q6). We evaluated rehabilitation outcomes by measuring fear of progression (FoP-Q-SF), need for psychosocial support, physical functioning and global quality of life (EORTC-QLQ-C30), and the work ability index (WAI). To explore the impact of HL on rehabilitation outcome, we used multiple regression analyses controlling for other factors.Results At the end of rehabilitation, up to 56 % of the patients reported difficulties in HL dimensions. Better HL was significantly associated with lower fear of progression (beta = -0,33) and need for psychosocial support (OR = 0,28), higher physical functioning beta = 0,22), higher global health status (beta = 0,23), and higher work ability (beta = 0,21). Longitudinal analyses showed that improvement in HL was significantly accompanied by improvements in all rehabilitation outcomes (0,18 <= beta <= 0,24).Conclusion HL is a relevant factor within cancer rehabilitation. More than half of the patients showed problematic HL at discharge. Furthermore, HL is a predictor of psychosocial, somatic, and work-related rehabilitation outcomes up to 9 months. Effective strategies to support patients in dealing with health information are essential and should be promoted within rehabilitation.