Date of Award
2022
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Social Work
Abstract
Un- and under-insured individuals have lower access and less health literacy than their insured counterparts. This is a major public health problem as lower health literacy leads to unhealthy communities which have higher chronic disease rates. This quantitative dissertation uses data from a public health hospital system to understand the relationship between health literacy and healthcare utilization. The Andersen Model has been applied to determine whether, or to what extent, health literacy explains the relationship between the identified predisposing and enabling factors and the outcomes of appropriate utilization of care by controlling for variables associated with health literacy. A sample from Cook County Health was extracted to assess for predisposing factors, enabling factors, and need of healthcare utilization and a regression was used. Results show that high health literacy has negative significant influence on ACHN visits (B= -0.129; p<0.001) and negative influence on ED encounters (B= -0.012; p>0.019) although not significant. This study allows for more investigation on health literacy among healthcare utilization and how best to address health literacy as an effort to increase health equity in the community.
Recommended Citation
Towey, Whitney Key, "Differences in Health Literacy and Healthcare Utilization for Uninsured Patients With Type II Diabetes" (2022). Dissertations. 4006.
https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/4006
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2022 Whitney Key Towey
