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General versus disease-specific health literacy in patients with breast cancer: a cross-sectional study

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Abstract

Health literacy is recognized as a critical factor affecting communication across the continuum of cancer care and plays a key role in patients’ ability to meaningfully discuss their condition with healthcare providers. However, there is no consensus on the best approach to measure health literacy in clinical practice. The aims of this study were to compare general and disease-specific measurements of health literacy in patients with breast cancer as well as examine their relationships with patient-provider communication. During office visits, patients with HER-2 + breast cancer who received care at oncology clinics with value-based models of care completed a survey including the 6-item cancer health literacy tool (CHLT-6), 6-item newest vital sign (NVS), 2 items measuring difficulty of patient-provider communication, and 11 demographic/clinical items. The mean age of 146 participants was 57.1 ± 10.8 years. Most participants had adequate general health literacy as measured by the NVS (79%) and a high probability of adequate cancer health literacy (≥ 0.7) as measured by the CHLT-6 (92%). Most patients easily communicated with healthcare providers (90.2%) and understood information they provided (83.5%). However, there was no significant relationship between patient-provider communication and health literacy. Both the CHLT-6 and NVS may be useful tools to assess the health literacy of patients with cancer in clinical practice. Study findings of adequate health literacy and ease of communication might have been influenced by the value-based care models adopted by participating clinics. Further research in more diverse samples of patients with cancer and different types of oncology practice settings is warranted.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Pharmacy, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Chisom Kanu, Carolyn M. Brown, Karen Rascati & Leticia R. Moczygemba

  2. Moody College of Communication, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Michael Mackert

  3. McKesson, Irving, TX, USA

    Lalan Wilfong

Authors
  1. Chisom Kanu
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  2. Carolyn M. Brown
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  3. Karen Rascati
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  4. Leticia R. Moczygemba
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  5. Michael Mackert
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  6. Lalan Wilfong
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Contributions

All authors made substantial contributions to the design and conduct of this study.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chisom Kanu.

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Ethics approval

This study was approved by the University of Texas at Austin Institutional Review Board (#2017–10-0024).

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Not applicable.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Dr Kanu was a doctoral student at the University of Texas when this research was conducted.

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Kanu, C., Brown, C.M., Rascati, K. et al. General versus disease-specific health literacy in patients with breast cancer: a cross-sectional study. Support Care Cancer 30, 5533–5538 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-022-06988-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-022-06988-6

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