Maternal schooling and comprehension of child health information in urban Zambia: is literacy a missing link in the maternal schooling-child health relationship?

This paper examines the relationship between literacy skills and comprehension of health information by studying mothers of young children in a high-density urban area in Zambia. Both decontextualized language and print literacy skills were assessed for each woman and the resulting scores were related to her comprehension of both broadcast and printed health information. The results indicate that fluency in a language is not sufficient for full comprehension of broadcast messages in the decontextualized type of language used in bureaucratic communication, and that a woman's ability to use decontextualized language is associated with greater comprehension of such messages. Skill in using this type of language increases with years of schooling, even in the poorly equipped schools in Zambia, as does print literacy, even though the levels of comprehension achieved are well below their grade level on average for these women. Some implications of these findings for both health care providers and educators are then considered.