Type 2 Diabetes Patients with Low Literacy More Likely to Have Poor Control
UCSF researchers recently published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that demonstrates that diabetes patients with low literacy are nearly twice as likely as patients with higher literacy to have poorly-controlled blood sugar and serious long-term diabetes complications. The study enrolled 408 patients with adult-onset diabetes and found that low literacy is often a hidden barrier to understanding how to manage the disease. According to Dean Schillinger, MD, UCSF Assistant Professor of Medicine at San Francisco Medical Center and lead author of the study, "Because our health system expects patients to be able to read at a very high level, we may be leaving a lot of patients in the dark."
UCSF researchers recently published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that demonstrates that diabetes patients with low literacy are nearly twice as likely as patients with higher literacy to have poorly-controlled blood sugar and serious long-term diabetes complications. The study enrolled 408 patients with adult-onset diabetes and found that low literacy is often a hidden barrier to understanding how to manage the disease. According to Dean Schillinger, MD, UCSF Assistant Professor of Medicine at San Francisco Medical Center and lead author of the study, "Because our health system expects patients to be able to read at a very high level, we may be leaving a lot of patients in the dark."