{"id":631573,"date":"2026-06-10T17:49:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T17:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/631573\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T17:49:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T17:49:10","slug":"a-surprising-number-of-gen-xers-and-millennials-cant-figure-out-a-pill-bottle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/631573\/","title":{"rendered":"A Surprising Number of Gen Xers and Millennials Can’t Figure Out a Pill Bottle"},"content":{"rendered":"

A substantial number of millennial and Gen X Americans have trouble reading a pill bottle, research out today suggests.<\/p>\n

Scientists at Northwestern University in Chicago tested the health literacy of primary care patients between their 30s and 50s. Roughly a third scored poorly on the test, while many struggled at everyday health-related tasks like choosing a medication\u2019s correct dosage or remembering a doctor\u2019s instructions. The findings indicate that more should be done to improve people\u2019s comprehension of their medical needs, the researchers say.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is less about what any individual can or cannot do and more about how the healthcare system can better support people in managing increasingly complex health demands,\u201d lead author Abigail Vogeley, a research fellow and neuropsychology doctoral student at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, told Gizmodo. \u201cIf you\u2019ve ever left a doctor\u2019s office unsure about what you were supposed to do next, you\u2019re not alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

A missing gap <\/p>\n

Studies have consistently shown<\/a> a majority of older adults struggle with health literacy, and the worse your health literacy is, the poorer your health tends to be. That\u2019s an alarming issue since these same people typically rely on many medications to take care of their various medical conditions.<\/p>\n

According to the researchers, however, there\u2019s been less attention paid to how literate younger Americans are about their health. So the team began a long-term study, known as the MidCog project<\/a>, to look at\u00a0how health literacy and other factors are affecting middle-aged Americans as they get older. It involved roughly 1,000 people who had recently scheduled a visit to a Chicago-area medical center or hospital (either in the past year prior to the study or in the six months after enrollment).<\/p>\n

\u201cOur team started investigating this earlier in midlife for several reasons. Middle age is when health problems and chronic conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol start to first appear. This time of life is also when the lifestyle habits people carry into later life really begin to form,\u201d senior researcher Michael Wolf, director of the Center for Applied Health Research on Aging at Northwestern, told Gizmodo. \u201cFor that reason, it\u2019s also the time when steps can be taken to prevent poorer health in later life.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

At the start of the study, participants were given a simple test used to evaluate health literacy, which asks people to read a nutritional label. They were also given a test of their self-management skills, which asked them to navigate through various health-related scenarios. Participants ranged in age from 35 to 64.<\/p>\n

Overall, 13.2% of people had clearly low health literacy, while another 19.3% had a marginal level. People with low to marginal literacy were also more likely to fail the tasks they were given.<\/p>\n

\u201cA relatable example is medication dosing. We gave participants several medication bottles and asked them to show us how they would take them correctly over the course of a day. Many people struggled to get it right, whether by taking the wrong dose, missing important warnings, or finding it difficult to organize multiple medications with different instructions,\u201d Vogeley explained. \u201cA label might say, \u2018Take twice daily,\u2019 which sounds simple enough. But when you\u2019re managing several medications, each written a little differently, organizing them correctly becomes much more challenging than people realize.\u201d<\/p>\n

Notably, people with low literacy were also more likely to have more chronic health conditions, to have more prescriptions, and to test lower on a cognitive screening test than others.<\/p>\n

The team\u2019s findings were published<\/a> Wednesday in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.<\/p>\n

The need for better health communication <\/p>\n

The researchers aren\u2019t looking to castigate people for their low health literacy. Instead, they argue we should be doing more to meet people where they are, such as with more intuitive drug labeling.<\/p>\n

\u201cMedications are an obvious example. Instructions for use are often vague, and can vary from one medication to another, from one doctor to another, or even one pharmacy to the next. Finding ways to have plain language and explicit steps on how and when to take them is common sense,\u201d said Wolf.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The MidCog project will continue to keep an eye on these volunteers. And hopefully, the team\u2019s work will eventually highlight how best to help everyone get the proper healthcare they need.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s really exciting about MidCog is that we\u2019re following the same people over time, so we\u2019ll be able to move beyond a snapshot and better understand what actually happens down the road. One of the goals is to understand whether struggling with these health-management tasks in midlife is connected to worse health outcomes later in life,\u201d said Vogeley. \u201cAnother goal is to identify ways to better engage middle-aged adults in their healthcare and support them in managing increasingly complex health demands.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A substantial number of millennial and Gen X Americans have trouble reading a pill bottle, research out today…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[213855,102,213856,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-631573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-drug-labeling","tag-health","tag-health-literacy","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}