What is health literacy?
According to a SurroundHealth article, health literacy can be defined as:
The degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.
-Institute of Medicine (IOM)
Did you know…?
- One in 3 adults have “basic” or “below-basic” health-literacy skills and those with poor
health literacy are more likely to have a chronic disease and less likely to get the health care they need.
- Only 12% of the population is considered to have “proficient” health literacy skills.
It may surprise you how many people have a low health literacy rate, even in an educated population.
In honor of Health Literacy month, we will be sharing lots of blogs, resources, and articles with you surrounding this topic. Here are a few of SurroundHealth’s most popular resources to kick off this month of learning & sharing:
- Health Literacy: A Foundation to Effective Patient Education — A primer on the basics
- Health Literacy Tools — An overview of methodologies used to assess reading level.
- Numeracy: A Key Component of Health Literacy — How to factor in basic math skills.
- Health Literacy Quiz for Health Professionals — Test your knowledge with this free download (PDF and PowerPoint versions available).
- Reflections on Health Literacy and Bridging the Gap from Healthcare to Home — Blog post exploring health literacy outside of the clinical setting.
There’s more! Stay tuned as we will be sharing more materials with you throughout the month of October!
