Health Literacy

This week’s module allowed me to grasp a stronger knowledge on what health literacy means and its importance in promoting and maintaining health. From looking through the module, I have understood health literacy to mean having enough health education to make informed decisions in order to achieve and maintain health. Health literacy is influenced by a number of social factors in our lives including culture, education, ethnicity, language, class, gender, and age. It is important to be health literate as one who has an adequate level of health literacy is able to “take responsibility for one’s own health as well as one’s family health and community health” (Sorensen, et al., 2012).

Looking through the module also helped me identify the population groups most at risk of low health literacy. These include: older adults, racial and ethnic minorities, people with less than a high school degree, low income levels, non-native speakers, and people with compromised health status. As a result of lack in health literacy, these groups are exposed to higher risks of illness and become unaware of preventative measures (e.g. mammograms) to prevent illness from occurring. It is important to realise that it is one thing to have a high level of health education but in order to gain the benefits of health literacy; you must apply your cognitive knowledge to practice.

It is the responsibility of health care professionals, like nurses, to ensure health information and services can be universally understood. This will be essential to understand as a Registered Nurse as I will may be dealing with patients that have a lack of health literacy where the need to educate them is greater. Furthermore, I have become aware of government and community initiatives that have been implemented to promote health literacy and assist groups that are at high risk of illness. As a health care professional, I would be required to have knowledge on where people can seek support and assistance to gain more health literacy.

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References:

Sorensen, K., et al. (2012). Health literacy and public health: a systematic review and integration of definitions and models. BioMed Central, BMC Public Health.