Newly-released data from the National Poll on Healthy Aging, a research collaboration between AARP and the University of Michigan, found that the majority of adults age 50 and older use the internet (82%) or a health care provider (81%) as a source of health information. However, 20% of older adults are not confident they can identify health / medical misinformation.

As the team at University of Michigan explains, health literacy is how well a person can find, understand, and use health information to make decisions and take actions for themselves and others. Health literacy helps build trust in medical settings and public health organizations, and it promotes good health and well-being for all. Strong health literacy skills also help people identify health misinformation — information that is false, inaccurate, or misleading based on the best available evidence or scientific knowledge at the time.

Among the 58% of older adults who used websites for health information, over half thought sites run by universities / medical schools (63%), non-profits (60%), health care systems (59%), or the federal government (57%) were very trustworthy. Fewer (36%) felt this way about health / health condition-focused sites.

This data may be helpful to communities working to become more age- and dementia friendly that are promoting information and opportunities around health and wellness.

The poll also asked about more traditional forms of health literacy and trust in health information. Among the findings:

• 18% of the older adults polled said they did not use the internet to look up health information at all in the past year; this percentage was highest among those over age 65 (24%), those who are Black and non-Hispanic (25%) and those with a high school education or less (26%).
• 14% disagreed completely or somewhat with the statement that it’s easy to understand written information from their health care provider, while 8% said the same about information they receive verbally from the provider
• 26% were not confident they knew or could find information about what an upcoming medical procedure would cost them out of pocket; 20% said the same about potential prescription costs and 18% said they same about upcoming office visits
• When it comes to prescription medicines, 90% agreed completely or somewhat that their medication bottle labels are easy to understand, and 91% agreed that the information that comes with their prescription medicines is easy to understand
• If they were asked to fill out medical forms, 82% felt extremely or quite a bit confident they could do it themselves, but 5% were a little bit or not at all confident.

The poll report is based on findings from a nationally representative survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for IHPI and administered online and via phone in February and March 2024 among 3,379 adults age 50 to 101. The sample was subsequently weighted to reflect the U.S. population.