Health Literacy

A major cause of rising health costs is low health literacy. Health literacy is the ability to obtain, process and understand health information and service needed to make appropriate health decisions. Health literacy affects people from all different backgrounds. You can be literate but not health literate. Examples of health literacy include such things vital to your health care as understanding medical terms, your doctor's instructions, health insurance coverage, directions for taking a medicine, reading and understanding written instructions for a medical procedure or the medicine bottle label, and applying self-management skills for controlling a chronic disease. Low health literacy contributes to higher utilization of health care services resulting in medical expenses that are up to four times greater than patients with adequate health literacy skills.

Information provided by Dr. Barbara (Bobbi) P. Clarke, Professor and Extension Health Specialist,
The University of Tennessee Extension - Family & Consumer Sciences

Related Topic Web Sites

	Center for Medicare Education
	Center for Medicare Education ~ Considering Health Literacy (Issue Brief, Vol. 1, No. 6, 2002)
	Low Health Literacy Skills Increase Annual Health Care Expenditures ~ National Academy on an Aging Society
	Health and Literacy Special Collection ~ National Institute for Literacy
	Health Literacy ~ Health Resources & Services Administration - US Dept. of Health & Human Services
	Health Literacy ~ Institute of Medicine of the National Academies
	Health Literacy: A Prescription to End Confusion ~ Institute of Medicine of the National Academies
	Health Literacy Bibliographies ~ National Library of Medicine (NLM) Current Bibliographies in Medicine 2000-2001
	Health Literacy Consulting
	Health Literacy: Help Your Patients Understand ~ American Medical Association (AMA) Foundation
	Health Literacy Style Manual ~ Covering Kids & Families
	Health Literacy Month
	Health Literacy: Statistics At-A-Glance ~ Pfizer Inc.
	Improving Health Literacy ~ National Institutes of Health
	Interactive Health Tutorials ~ Medline Plus
	Navigating Health: Role of Health Literacy ~ Alliance for Health and the Future, International Longevity Centre-UK
	Quick Guide to Health Literacy ~ US Dept. of Health & Human Services
	Teaching Patients with Low Literacy Skills ~ Harvard School of Public Health
	Virginia Adult Education Health Literacy Toolkit
	What is Health Literacy? ~ Pfizer Inc.