The Relationship between Health Literacy and Rate of Receiving Integrated and Comprehensive Geriatric Care Program with Self-care Ability in Elderly Women

Health literacy can be effective in the control and self-care in old age, how to receive care services, reduce the costs of the health system; therefore, we aimed to investigate the relationship between health literacy and the rate of geriatric care programs with self-care ability in elderly women. This correlative study was conducted on 260 women aged ≥60 years covered by the health centers in Dezful who were selected by using randomized sampling method. Data were collected by HELIA, SASE questionnaire, and checklist of the care plan received. Data were analyzed by SPSS 21, descriptive statistics and statistical tests.  The results showed that 247 (95%) women had poor health literacy levels and 223 (85.8%) women had low self-care ability and 77(29.6%) of them have a desirable care for the elderly. There was a significant relationship between health literacy and self-care ability (P<0.05, r=0/4-0/7) and the significant relationship was also found between health literacy and self-care ability in the two levels of desirable and undesirable receipt of care program (P<0.05).  Health literacy and receiving integrated and comprehensive geriatric care programs can directly affect the self-care ability of older women. Considering the increase in the elderly population of Iran and the challenges arising from it, attention to the self-care ability and maintaining individual independence of the elderly in parallel with promoting health literacy with education in the field of health information of old age and specific problems of this period and strategies is required.