The Impact of the Chronic Disease Self-Management Program on Health Literacy: A Pre-Post Study Using a Multi-Dimensional Health Literacy Instrument

Abstract

This study assessed the impact of the Chronic Disease Self-Management Program (CDSMP) on different domains of health literacy using a pre-post study design. Participants aged over 16 years and with one or more self-reported chronic diseases were recruited for the CDSMP in western Sydney (a highly diverse area of New South Wales, Australia) between October 2014 and September 2018<b>.</b> Health literacy was assessed pre- and immediately post-intervention using the Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ), with differences in mean scores for each HLQ domain analysed using paired sample t-tests. A total of 486 participants were recruited into the CDSMP. Of those, 316 (65.0%) completed both pre- and post-intervention surveys and were included in the analysis. The median age of the participants was 68 years, the majority were female (62.5%), and most were born in a country other than Australia (80.6%). There were statistically significant (<i>p</i> < 0.001) improvements across all nine domains of the HLQ. This is the first study evaluating the potential impact of the CDSMP on improving different domains of health literacy amongst a diverse sample of participants with chronic diseases using a multi-dimensional instrument. The absence of a control population in this study warrants caution when interpreting the results.