Health Literacy

This chapter discusses health literacy and how a person's ability to understand health information can affect their health and wellbeing. It describes the consequences of low health literacy on health outcomes and health disparities. The chapter also explains how health literacy research is multi-faceted and describes different constructs and measures. It also shows why culture and language are such an important part of understanding and using health information. Finally, the chapter explains why organizations that provide health information must take responsibility for improving organizational health literacy to provide clear, accurate, easily accessed and easily understood health information.