Health Literacy Fact Sheet
From the AAPA Committee on Diversity

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Health Literacy Defined

"The degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions." (Ratzan and Parker, 2000).

Health Literacy Problems are Common

It is estimated that over half of all Americans are impacted by health literacy difficulties, which include problems communicating with their medical provider, reading and following instructions on their medicine bottles, or completing medical and insurance paperwork.

Health Literacy Has a Greater Impact on Minorities

While poor health literacy affects all Americans, it has even more impact on racial and ethnic minorities, older patients, and patients of lower socioeconomic status. Up to 20 percent of Spanish-speaking patients do not seek medical advice because of language difficulties. Two-thirds of US adults over 60 have difficulty with literacy skills, while over 80 percent of patients at a public hospital could not read prescription labels.

Poor Health Literacy Predicts Poor Health

Diabetic patients with health literacy problems have more poorly controlled blood sugar. Low-literacy HIV-positive adults miss more treatment doses, and emergency rooms patients are twice as likely to be hospitalized when compared to patients with higher levels of health literacy.

Health Literacy is Hidden

Over two-thirds of patients with reading problems never tell their spouse, and many patients with literacy problems never tell anyone.

Recommendations for Improving Health Literacy

• Examine clinical communication, both verbal and written, for potential areas of misunderstanding or miscommunication between medical providers and patients.
• Incorporate health literacy competencies into professional training of Physician Assistants and other healthcare professionals.
• Support development of measures of health literacy.
• Establish National Health Education standards.
• Incorporate health related tasks in reading, writing, oral language skills, and mathematics training.
• Combine health literacy with basic literacy instruction.
• Explore creative approaches to communicate health information used in print and electronic material.

(Above from "Health Literacy" by Institute of Medicine and from the American Public Health Association Health Literacy Fact Sheet)