DNP 825 How is health literacy entwined with health promotion and disease prevention strategies and how do these factors relate to general population health?

Personal health literacy is an individual’s ability to find, understand, and use health information to make health decisions. A person can choose behaviors for themselves and others in their care. For example, health literacy might refer to a parent’s or guardian’s ability to find information about childhood illnesses and use it to determine when to provide care at home and when to visit the pediatrician. Organizational health literacy refers to how well an organization which could be a physician’s practice, hospital, community clinic, insurance provider, or any other organization that provides health-related service makes information available for individuals to use when making health-related decisions. This includes making information easy to find, understand, and equitable. For instance, this includes designing brochures, signage, and marketing materials with accessibility for persons with disabilities in mind (Rikard, R. V.,et al 2017).

Health equity is at the heart of health literacy initiatives. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), health equity means that everyone has the opportunity to reach their full health potential without disadvantages created by social circumstances. Achieving health equity requires awareness of an individual’s culture and how it affects their ideas and perceptions of health. It also affects how they communicate. This does not always mean finding ways to communicate with individuals who speak languages other than English, which is a priority in many communities. Some English-speaking patients may also have limited language proficiency and understanding. They require providers to use plain language free of medical jargon when explaining health concepts, treatments, and medications (Poureslami, I, et al, 2017).

Health literacy is important. Patients with lower literacy levels are at increased risk for health problems and poor outcomes. This includes taking the wrong medication or taking medication incorrectly, failing to seek treatment, waiting too long to seek treatment, and needing more treatment as compared to those with strong health literacy (Palumbo, R. (2017).

References

Palumbo, R. (2017). Examining the impacts of health literacy on healthcare costs: An evidence synthesis. Health Services Management Research,  30, 197–212. doi: 10.1177/0951484817733366

Poureslami, I., Nimmon, L., Rootman, I., & Fitzgerald, M. J. (2017). Health literacy and chronic disease management: Drawing from expert knowledge to set an agenda. Health Promotion International,  32, 743–754. doi: 10.1093/heapro/daw003

Rikard, R. V., Thompson, M. S., McKinney, J., & Beauchamp, A. (2016). Examining health literacy disparities in the United States: A third look at the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL). BMC Public Health,  16(1), 975. doi: 10.1186/s12889-016-3621-9