Last week at the 8th annual Health Literacy conference put on by the Institute for Health Care Advancement, I first heard a new proposed definition of health literacy that I am intending to use.
“Health literacy allows the public and personnel working in health-related contexts to find, understand, evaluate, communicate and use information.”
This definition really underscores the importance of skills (be they oral English, reading abilities, abilities to speak Plain Language, etc.) on the part of all parties (patients, providers, health educators) involved in communication and decisions about health. Andrew Pleasant and colleagues suggest that future work in the field of health literacy underscore the shared roles of patients and providers.
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