What is health literacy?
Health literacy is defined as: the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, communicate, process and understand the basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.
–The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, 2010
In other words, health literacy is the ability to make good health decisions every day.
- Read and evaluate complex health information
- Weigh the risks and benefits of medical procedures
- Comprehend the doctor’s advice
- Use math to calculate medicine dosage
- Interpret test results
- Find health information on our own
This is not always easy.
More than 90 million people in the United States –about the same number of people in France, Belgium and the Netherlands combined—have a hard time understanding and using health information. In Missouri, low health literacy affects 1.6 million adults.
The risks are great. People with low health literacy are:
- More likely to be hospitalized
- More likely to use emergency rooms
- More likely to have medication and treatment errors
- Less likely to follow through with their treatment plans
- Less likely to obtain preventative care
They are also more likely to die earlier.
Low health literacy costs the U.S. economy between $106 billion and $236 billion annually. For Missouri, the number ranges from $3.3 billion to $7.5 billion annually.
Improving health literacy has become a national effort with the release of the National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy in May 2010.
Missouri faces several health challenges. It ranks among the lowest states for premature death, obesity, smoking and preventable hospitalizations.
Looking at health determinants and health outcomes, the United Health Foundation ranks Missouri 38 among all states. Missouri ranked 36 in a Commonwealth Fund measurement that looked at performance in access, prevention and treatment, avoidable hospital use and costs, equity and healthy lives.
Low health literacy has been linked to many of the health issues Missouri faces. A 2011 updated literature review confirmed that adults with low health literacy tend to:
- Have poor health status
- Use emergency rooms and inpatient care more frequently
- Have a higher risk of death
Learn more about “The State of Missouri’s Health” at www.covermissouri.org/facts.