The associations of patient demographic characteristics and health information recall: the mediating role of health literacy.

We examined the mediating role of health literacy in the relationships between participant demographic characteristics and health information recall. Baseline data from two studies that focused on hypertensive adults (N = 1190; M = 62.28 years, SD = 11.98; 35.5% female; 45.9% African-American) were analyzed. The final model, which adjusted for recruitment site, indicated that financial status, race, and education were indirectly related to health information recall through health literacy. Increasing education was also directly related to better health information recall. Increasing age was not related to health literacy, but was related to poorer health information recall. The final model fit the data very well, chi(2)(3) = 0.69, p = .36, RMSEA = .000 (90% CI = .000 to .024), CFI = 1.00. The results suggest that health literacy might be one of the mechanisms underlying the relationships between participant demographic characteristics and poor health outcomes due to inaccurate recall of instructions.