Health Literacy and Health Care Utilization in Austria.

Background: Efficient use of health care is crucial for health care systems; the literature reveals that health literacy (HL) plays an important role in health services utilization.

Objective: This study aimed to analyze the relationship between HL and health care utilization in Austria.

Methods: Registered data of 1,010 persons in the general population concerning costs of doctor visits, medication costs, and number, days, and costs of hospitalization were analyzed using a cross-sectional design for the observation period 2017 to 2019.

Daily GRACE satellite data evaluate short-term hydro-meteorological fluxes from global atmospheric reanalyses.

Changes in terrestrial water storage as observed by the satellite gravity mission GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) represent a new and completely independent way to constrain the net flux imbalance in atmospheric reanalyses. In this study daily GRACE gravity field changes are used for the first time to investigate high-frequency hydro-meteorological fluxes over the continents. Band-pass filtered water fluxes are derived from GRACE water storage time series by first applying a numerical differentiation filter and subsequent high-pass filtering to isolate fluxes at periods between 5 and 30 days corresponding to typical time-scales of weather system persistence at moderate latitudes.