A process-knowledge approach to supporting self-care among older adults

We argue that the concept of health literacy, in itself, is less important than lifespan psychological models integrated with a human factors engineering approach for explaining the role of abilities, skills, beliefs, and other mental resources for self-care among older adults and for designing supports for effective self-care. We describe a process-knowledge model of these resources, as well as work investigating how the interplay of age-related processing capacity constraints and knowledge benefits, in combination with characteristics of self-care learning environments, influence comprehension, memory, and decision-making processes involved in older adults' self-care. These findings provide a foundation for our studies that investigated whether redesigned web-based environments support these self-care processes. At the end of the chapter, we return to the health literacy concept to consider its role in health provider contexts.