Differences in Rural and Urban Health Information Access and Use

Purpose Rural residents may have lower access to and use of certain health information sources relative to urban residents. We investigated differences in information source access and use between rural and urban US adults and whether having low health literacy might exacerbate rural disparities in...

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Veröffentlicht in:The Journal of rural health Jg. 35; H. 3; S. 405 - 417
Hauptverfasser: Chen, Xuewei, Orom, Heather, Hay, Jennifer L., Waters, Erika A., Schofield, Elizabeth, Li, Yuelin, Kiviniemi, Marc T.
Format: Journal Article
Sprache:Englisch
Veröffentlicht: England Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.06.2019
Schlagworte:
Access
Access to information
Adult
Adults
Aged
Blogs
business enterprises
Chi-Square Distribution
Companies
Constraints
corporations
Female
Health care
Health disparities
Health education
Health information
health information access
health information use
Health literacy
Health services
Health Services Accessibility - standards
Health Services Accessibility - statistics & numerical data
Humans
Information
Information Dissemination
Information sources
Internet
Literacy
Male
Mass media
Medical personnel
Middle Aged
Physicians
Primary care
Regression analysis
Regression models
Residents
Rural areas
rural health
Rural Population - statistics & numerical data
Rural populations
Rural urban differences
Rurality
rural‐urban health disparities
Search engines
sociodemographic characteristics
Sociodemographics
surveys
Surveys and Questionnaires
United States
Urban areas
Urban population
Urban Population - statistics & numerical data
Urban populations
United States
health literacy
health information access
health information use
rural-urban health disparities
ISSN:0890-765X, 1748-0361, 1748-0361
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Zusammenfassung:Purpose Rural residents may have lower access to and use of certain health information sources relative to urban residents. We investigated differences in information source access and use between rural and urban US adults and whether having low health literacy might exacerbate rural disparities in access to and use of health information. Methods Six hundred participants (50% rural) completed an online survey about access and use of 25 health information sources. We used logistic regression models to test associations between rurality and access to and use of health information sources and whether rurality interacted with health literacy to predict the access and use. Findings Compared to urban residents, rural residents had lower access to health information from sources including primary care providers, specialist doctors, blogs, and magazines, and less use of search engines. After accounting for sociodemographics, rural residents only had lower access to specialist doctors than urban residents. Rural residents with limited health literacy had lower access to mass media and scientific literature but higher use of corporations/companies than rural residents with adequate health literacy and urban residents regardless of health literacy level. Conclusions Some differences in access to and use of health information sources may be accounted for by sociodemographic differences between rural and urban populations. There may be structural barriers such as shortage of specialist doctors and limited media exposure that make it harder for rural residents to access health information, especially those with limited health literacy.
Bibliographie:Funding for the project leading to this manuscript was made possible by R01CA197351 from the National Cancer Institute.
Disclosures
Funding
The authors report no conflicts of interest.
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ISSN:0890-765X
1748-0361
1748-0361
DOI:10.1111/jrh.12335