Health Literacy

What is health literacy?

Healthy People 2030 defines personal health literacy and organizational health literacy as:

Personal health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the ability to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others.
Organizational health literacy is the degree to which organizations equitably enable individuals to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others.

Why does this matter?

People with high health literacy skill are more likely to:

Have improved health outcomes
Increase the use of preventive health care
Lower unneeded emergency room visits
Lower preventable stays in the hospital and readmissions
Lower medication dosing errors
Better manage their chronic conditions such as diabetes, high cholesterol, hypertension, and HIV/AIDS

People with low health literacy skills are more likely to:

Have poor health outcomes, including hospital stays and emergency room visits
Skip preventive services, like flu shots and cancer screenings
Make medication errors, or have trouble following their treatment plan
Have trouble managing chronic diseases
Have higher mortality rates

The National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy highlights certain populations that are most likely to experience limited health literacy:

Adults over the age of 65 years
Racial and ethnic groups other than White
Recent refugees and immigrants
People with less than a high school degree or GED
People with incomes at or below the poverty level
Non-native speakers of English

There are many factors that can affect personal health literacy including:

Understanding medical terms or how their body works
Being able to find health information
Understanding information to evaluate risks and benefits that affect their health and safety
Having a diagnosis of a serious illness and are scared and confused
Having health conditions that require complicated self-care
Having limited literacy skills

Literacy in Niagara County

Over 36,000 adults in Niagara County lack basic literacy skills. Research has shown a connection with low literacy levels, poor health outcomes, and chronic conditions, including diabetes and cancer. Individuals with limited literacy face additional difficulties following medication instructions, communicating with health care providers, and obtaining health information.

https://map.barbarabush.org/

Resources for people with lower literacy skills:

Education and tutoring can help address some factors that contribute to low health literacy. There are several agencies that prove literacy services including:

Literacy Buffalo Niagara offers free one-on-one literacy tutoring https://literacybuffalo.org/
Niagara University’s College of Education’s Family Literacy Center provides a valuable community resource for diagnosing and remediating reading difficulties, while also facilitating literacy development. https://www.niagara.edu/family-literacy-center/
WNY Literacy, operated by Orleans Niagara BOCES can assist with math, reading, and writing remediation https://wnyliteracy.com/

How can your organization address health literacy?

When people understand health information, they can make well-informed health decisions. Organizations can ensure they are communicating clearly by using health literacy universal precautions and best practices. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) health literacy universal precautions toolkit provides twenty-one tools to help reduce the complexity of health care.

Tools includes:

Welcome Patients to create a friendly and supportive environment
Communicate Clearly using plain language in verbal and written communication
Use the Teach-back Method to check for understanding
Make referral easy to increase the patients chances they will follow through

Create policies and procedures to promote a health literate organization. This is an important key to address health literacy as your organization plays a fundamental role in connecting people with health information.

Watch this short video from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, for proven strategies to make health information and services easier to find, understand, and use in your organization 5 Things to Know About Health Literacy

Benefits to your organization

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 3 to 5 percent of total yearly healthcare costs is due to limited health literacy. They estimate national health literacy efforts could have the potential to save $120 to $200 billion in healthcare costs each year. Promoting health literacy skills can potential lower healthcare spending in all areas.

The benefits of promoting health literacy include:

Lower healthcare costs
Decreased hospital readmissions
Improved patient experience and satisfaction
Decreased legal risk and liability