What are health literacy issues?
Health literacy relates to how people access, understand and use health information in ways that benefit their health. People with low health literacy are at higher risk of worse health outcomes and poorer health behaviours. The idea of health literacy is dynamic and evolving.
Is health literacy a concept?
Background: Health literacy is a relatively new concept in health promotion research. The defining attributes of health literacy are reading and numeracy skills, comprehension, the capacity to use information in health care decision-making, and successful functioning as a healthcare consumer.
How does health literacy influence health?
Low health literacy has been consistently associated with poor health outcomes, including poorer health status [7–9], lack of knowledge about medical conditions and related care [10], lack of engagement with health care providers [11], decreased comprehension of medical information [10], mortality [12], and poorer use …
What is the evolving concept of health literacy?
This paper describes the two distinctive concepts that reflect health literacy, respectively, as a clinical “risk”, or a personal “asset”. In the former case a strong science is developing to support screening for poor literacy skills in clinical care and this is leading to a range of changes to clinical practice and organization.
How many articles are there on health literacy?
All full text published articles written in English and Persian language were included from inception until January 2019, but the type of study is not limited. A total of 52 potentially relevant articles with data on 36,523 participants were included in this review.
Which is an example of a health literacy risk factor?
Health literacy as a clinical “risk factor”• Progressive improvement in understanding of health service organisation and environmental factors that exacerbate or minimise impact of low literacy, for example: – ease of making appointments – functional organisation of clinics – use of appropriate communication materials/signage 18 19.
Why is literacy important for a healthy population?
Thus, achieving high levels of literacy in a population is not only a vital development goal, but will also produce substantial public health benefits ( WHO Commission on the Social Determinants of Health, 2007 ).