Health literacy
Health literacy refers to the ability to obtain, understand, and utilize health-related information to make informed decisions about one's health. This multifaceted concept encompasses various skills, including the ability to locate credible health information, evaluate different sources, and navigate the healthcare system. It also involves interpreting health data presented in various formats, such as written texts, numerical data, or visual aids, and following health-related instructions accurately.
In recent years, health literacy has garnered attention as an essential aspect of patient-centered care and a significant factor in addressing health disparities. Research indicates a correlation between individuals' educational levels, their health literacy skills, and their overall health outcomes. Challenges persist, even in highly literate populations, as many struggle with understanding complex health information, particularly in a digital age where reliable information is often difficult to distinguish from unreliable sources.
Poor health literacy can lead to inadequate management of health conditions, unhealthy lifestyle choices, and increased risk of adverse health outcomes. Recent initiatives, such as the Healthy People 2030 program, emphasize the importance of both personal and organizational health literacy, aiming to enhance access to and understanding of health information across diverse populations, thus promoting health equity.
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Health literacy
Health literacy is the ability to acquire and understand information about medical and health issues and to make appropriate decisions based on that information. Health literacy is a complex topic because it may include many different competencies, including the ability to locate appropriate health information (which requires literacy and possibly a computer); to evaluate multiple sources of information for credibility; to consider the risks and benefits of different options; to navigate the health care system effectively; to understand health-related information whether presented orally, in writing, numerically, or visually (e.g., using graphs or charts); and to follow health-related instructions (e.g., to take a prescription drug correctly) whether presented orally or in writing.
Overview
Health literacy is a topic of relatively recent concern in medicine and public health, with this concern forming part of the contemporary patient-centered approach to care. The increasing complexity of health care and the health care delivery system has also increased focus on health literacy. Finally, health literacy has become a central topic in the discussion of health care inequalities, because many studies have found links between general educational and literacy levels, health literacy, and health outcomes.
Although health literacy involves more than simply the ability to read, various studies have found that even in countries such as the United States, with relatively high levels of people who have completed high school, many adults have difficulty following written instructions or interpreting written information in order to carry out daily tasks related to finance or safety. With health information, this problem is compounded given the amount of technical knowledge that may be required to understand it, the complexity of many contemporary health care delivery systems, and the complex reasoning that may be required to evaluate health information or choose between different courses of treatment. The widespread availability of health-related information of varying quality on the Internet also contributes to these difficulties, because even though locating information on health topics has become easier, locating reliable information and/or separating the reliable from the unreliable has become more difficult.
In general, people with poor reading skills have been found to know less about any health conditions than those with better reading skills, to be less successful in controlling those conditions (e.g., diabetics with poor reading skills are less successful in controlling their blood sugar), to be more likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors (e.g., smoking, failing to exercise), and are more likely to suffer a number of adverse outcomes, from hospitalization to episodes of depression to incidence of cervical cancer.
The Institute of Medicine, an independent, nonprofit organization within the US National Academy of Sciences, made a number of recommendations to improve health literacy in its 2004 report. These include devoting more attention to the relationships among the healthcare system, the educational system, various cultural systems, and health literacy; developing and testing more effective measures of health literacy; and including measures of health literacy in the quality assessment and accreditation activities conducted by national bodies such as the National Committee for Quality Assurance and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
In 2020, the US Department of Health and Human Service's Office of Disease Prevention and Health Protection released new definitions of health literacy in its Healthy People 2030 initiative. The agency defined personal health literacy as "the degree to which individuals have the ability to find, understand, and use information and serices to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others." It also defined organizational health literacy as "the degree to which organizations equitably enable individuals to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others." The agency said that these definitions take a public health perspective to health literacy, one that acknowledges that health literacy is linked to health equity.
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