59 Health Literacy
What is Health Literacy?
In the report, Healthy People 2010, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services included improved consumer health literacy and identified health literacy as an important component of health communication, medical product safety, and oral health. Health literacy is defined in Health People 2010 as: “The degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.”
Health literacy includes the ability to understand instructions on prescription drug bottles, appointment slips, medical education brochures, doctor’s directions and consent forms, and the ability to negotiate complex health care systems. Health literacy is not simply the ability to read. It requires a complex group of reading, listening, analytical, and decision-making skills, and the ability to apply these skills to health situations.
Health literacy varies by context and setting and is not necessarily related to years of education or general reading ability. A person who functions adequately at home or work may have marginal or inadequate literacy in a health care environment. With the move towards a more “consumer-centric” health care system as part of an overall effort to improve the quality of health care and to reduce health care costs, individuals need to take an even more active role in health care related decisions. To accomplish this people need strong health information skills.
Skills Needed for Health Literacy
Patients are often faced with complex information and treatment decisions. Some of the specific tasks patients are required to carry out may include:
- evaluating information for credibility and quality,
- analyzing relative risks and benefits,
- calculating dosages,
- interpreting test results, or
- locating health information.
In order to accomplish these tasks, individuals may need to be:
- visually literate (able to understand graphs or other visual information),
- computer literate (able to operate a computer),
- information literate (able to obtain and apply relevant information), and
- numerically or computationally literate (able to calculate or reason numerically).
Oral language skills are important as well. Patients need to articulate their health concerns and describe their symptoms accurately. They need to ask pertinent questions, and they need to understand spoken medical advice or treatment directions. In an age of shared responsibility between physician and patient for health care, patients need strong decision-making skills. With the development of the Internet as a source of health information, health literacy may also include the ability to search the Internet and evaluate websites.
According to the American Medical Association, poor health literacy is “a stronger predictor of a person’s health than age, income, employment status, education level, and race.” In Health Literacy: A Prescription to End Co