An official website of the United States government
QuickStats: Percentage* of Adults Aged ≥25 Years Who Had Seen a Health Care Professional in the Past 12 Months and Who Easily Understood Information from Their Health Care Providers Most or All of the Time,† by Sex and Education Level — National Health Interview Survey,§ United States, 2017
Weekly / November 15, 2019 / 68(45);1042
Abbreviation: GED = general educational development certificate.
* With 95% confidence intervals indicated by error bars.
† Based on the response to survey questions that asked “How often did your health care providers tell or give you information about your health and health care that was easy to understand? Would you say always, most of the time, some of the time, or none of the time?” Response categories “always” and “most of the time” were combined and displayed. Adults who had not seen a doctor in the past 12 months were excluded from these estimates.
§ Estimates were based on household interviews of a sample of the civilian, noninstitutionalized U.S. population and were derived from the National Health Interview Survey Sample Adult component.
In 2017, 91.6% of adults aged ≥25 years easily understood information from their health care providers most or all of the time. The percentage of adults who easily understood health care information most or all of the time increased as education level increased. Adults who had completed a bachelor’s degree or higher were the most likely to understand their health care providers at least most of the time (93.9%), whereas those without a high school diploma were the least likely (85.2%). Men (91.0%) were somewhat less likely than women (92.1%) to have easily understood information from providers most or all of the time.
Source: National Health Interview Survey, 2017. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhis.htm.
Reported by: Alicia Jen; Carla Zelaya, PhD, [email protected], 301-458-4164.
Suggested citation for this article: QuickStats: Percentage of Adults Aged ≥25 Years Who Had Seen a Health Care Professional in the Past 12 Months and Who Easily Understood Information from Their Health Care Providers Most or All of the Time, by Sex and Education Level — National Health Interview Survey, United States, 2017. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2019;68:1042. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6845a6.
MMWR and Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report are service marks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Use of trade names and commercial sources is for identification only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services.
References to non-CDC sites on the Internet are
provided as a service to MMWR readers and do not constitute or imply
endorsement of these organizations or their programs by CDC or the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services. CDC is not responsible for the content
of pages found at these sites. URL addresses listed in MMWR were current as of
the date of publication.
All HTML versions of MMWR articles are generated from final proofs through an automated process. This conversion might result in character translation or format errors in the HTML version. Users are referred to the electronic PDF version (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr) and/or the original MMWR paper copy for printable versions of official text, figures, and tables.
Questions or messages regarding errors in formatting should be addressed to [email protected].