Health literacy associated with successful aging in Egyptian hospital study

Researchers at Kasr Alainy Hospital in Egypt examined health literacy and successful aging in 246 adults aged 65 years or older recruited through the family medicine department. The cross-sectional study included 123 patients with chronic diseases and 123 controls without diagnosed chronic diseases. Participants completed face-to-face interviews using the Health Literacy Questionnaire and Successful Aging Scale between October 2024 and March 2025; 87% of eligible individuals approached participated.

Patients with chronic diseases had lower health-literacy and successful-aging scores than controls (p < 0.001). Health literacy correlated positively with successful aging (r = 0.612; p < 0.001) and was reported as the strongest independent predictor in regression analysis. Higher education and income were associated with better successful-aging scores, whereas older age, rural residence, and smoking were associated with lower scores.

The findings identify health literacy as a potential target for research in older adults’ care, rather than demonstrating an intervention benefit. Both measures were collected at the same time, preventing conclusions about causality or temporal direction. Single-center purposive sampling and exclusion of people with cognitive impairment limit generalizability. The authors call for longitudinal studies, community-based probability sampling, fully validated Arabic instruments with population-specific psychometric reporting, and randomized evaluations of health-literacy interventions.