Health Literacy

Health literacy requires inclusive and equitable access to quality education and life-long learning. Health literacy is shaped by a wide range of societal factors and is, therefore, not the sole responsibility of individuals to develop and maintain. All information providers, including government, civil society and health services should enable access to trustworthy information in a form that is understandable and actionable for all people. These social resources for health literacy include regulation of the information environment and media (oral, print, broadcast and digital) in which people obtain access to and use health information.

By improving people’s access to understandable and trustworthy health information and their capacity to use it effectively, health literacy is critical to both empowering people to make decisions about personal health, and in enabling their engagement in collective health promotion action to address the determinants of health.

Health literacy is associated with age, gender, educational attainment, income and occupation, poverty, racial/ethnic minority status, literacy and language skills, health insurance coverage, and self-reported health. Differences exist within and across population groups and settings. These differences, fuelled by disparities, can impact whether people can easily develop and use health literacy, and whether they have access to quality and trustworthy information and services. It is important to consider these disparities when developing health policies and allocating resources. Even people who read well and are comfortable using numbers can face health literacy issues when:

• they aren’t familiar with medical terms or how their bodies work;
• they must interpret statistics and evaluate risks and benefits that affect their health and safety;
• they are diagnosed with a serious illness and are scared and confused;
• they are under stress and have to make important health decisions;
• they have health conditions that require complicated self-care; or
• they are voting on an issue affecting the community’s health and relying on unfamiliar technical information, which can further exacerbate gender and health equity issues.

This makes health literacy an important determinant of health and health behaviour. At the same time, new determinants of health have emerged and threaten to widen the inequity gap. Among these are, for example, the digital determinants of health and the commercial determinants of health.

Strategies and interventions are recommended that increase both organizational and personal health literacy.

• Organizational health literacy can be promoted by improving training and organizational processes including strengthening communication, informed decision-making, and access to culturally and linguistically appropriate health information and services.
• Professional health literacy is an essential part of an organization’s responsiveness towards patients’ health literacy and communication needs. It can be addressed through regular training of healthcare and education professionals.
• Personal health literacy may be strengthened by accurate, timely and appropriate health and science information as well as by the implementation of a health promoting educational curricula from an early age at home, in kindergartens, at schools through university level and as part of adult education.
• Assessing health literacy in populations and communities can guide policy development and intervention design to strengthen health literacy development in timely and relevant ways depending on needs.