Health literacy demand and attitudes toward COVID-19 prevention measures among Korean American older adults and their caregivers

Abstract Background Health literacy has been linked to positive attitudes toward COVID-19 preventive measures among adolescents and young- or middle-aged adult populations. This study examined the relationship between health literacy and attitudes toward COVID-19 preventive measures among non-English speaking Korean American older adults and their caregivers. The study additionally investigated how sociodemographic characteristics were associated with attitudes. Methods COVID-19 survey data was collected from potential participants for an ongoing randomized controlled trial involving both Korean American older adults and their caregivers in the Baltimore-Washington and the New York Metropolitan areas (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03909347). Korean American older adults with normal cognition and their caregivers were allowed to participate in the survey. We used latent profile analysis to find unique clusters of participants with a similar pattern of responses to attitudes toward COVID-19 preventive measures. Based on the analysis, we employed multinomial logistic regression to investigate how health literacy and sociodemographic characteristics were associated with the clusters. Results We found three clusters based on participant responses to COVID-19 preventive measures—Positive, Negative, or Mixed. Health literacy was not associated with COVID-19 related attitudes in the study sample. Men were 2.37 times more likely to be categorized as Mixed than having Positive Attitudes compared to women. The odds of a person living in the New York metropolitan area being categorized as having Mixed Attitudes compared to Positive Attitudes were also 2.67 times more than for a person living in the Baltimore-Washington area. Conclusions Differences in attitudes toward COVID-19 preventive measures were found among sociodemographic variables but not health literacy. Investigating what information channels or methods drive perception of public health information such as COVID-19 may help identify effective dissemination strategies for non-English speaking Korean older adults.