A Study on the Issue of Health Information Poverty Among the Elderly in Rural Areas

Abstract

Against the backdrop of actively addressing population aging and the convergence of the Healthy China initiative and digital rural development, health information has become a crucial resource for the elderly to identify disease risks, access medical services, engage in self-care, and safeguard their health rights. However, the rural elderly population still faces structural constraints in acquiring, understanding, identifying, transforming, and using health information, resulting in health information poverty characterized by a combination of age, geographical location, technology, and institutional factors. Based on theories of information poverty, health literacy, and digital inequality, this paper constructs an analytical framework of "resource accessibility—capacity transformation—contextual support—outcome feedback" to systematically reveal the main manifestations, generation mechanisms, and governance pathways of health information poverty among the rural elderly. The study argues that health information poverty among the rural elderly is not simply caused by low levels of education or insufficient use of smart devices, but rather by a complex poverty shaped by insufficient age-appropriate health information supply, weak rural public services, unstable intergenerational family support, limited grassroots medical dissemination capabilities, and the commercialization logic of digital platforms. The consequences not only weaken the elderly's health decision-making abilities but may also exacerbate disease delays, misallocation of medical resources, health anxiety, and social exclusion. Solving this problem requires concerted efforts from various levels, including public information supply, grassroots health communication, digital aging-friendly transformation, family and community support networks, and health information governance systems, to help rural elderly people move from "being able to access information" to "being able to understand information, trust information, and use information effectively."