HEALTH LITERACY

THE ROLE OF HEALTH LITERACY IN PREVENTIVE HEALTH CARE

Health literacy is a key point in helping individuals understand and, just as important, implement knowledge in pursuit of a healthier lifestyle. The application of this knowledge is where the challenge lies. However, by applying health information to enable favourable behavioural changes, it is possible to take a big step towards disease prevention.

Reducing the onset of diseases is the main purpose of preventive medicine, helping people live happier and better lives and achieve their best selves. One huge component to this involves health literacy: a modifiable factor of shaping people’s behaviours – and ultimately, their health. People with greater self-reported health literacy exhibit a greater chance of developing health preventative behaviours, such as engaging in physical activity, adhering to regular check-ups, and a better perception of social standing and self-health control.

Health literacy can be divided into three levels:

1. Functional health literacy (knowwhy) refers to effective information communication.

2. Interactive (know-how) talks about new skill acquisition.

3. Criticism or application includes personal and community empowerment in regards to healthy living.

Although understanding the levels can help create effective health promotion and prevention strategies, individuals must also be empowered with techniques to help them apply this theoretical knowledge. This includes having certain skills which are important to health literacy, such as comprehension (reading and understanding health information), numeracy (the ability to process, communicate, and act on numerical data), critical media literacy (the ability to analyse media for credibility, purpose, and quality), and digital literacy (the ability to use digital tools for accessing and synthesising information).

An individual’s level of health literacy and ability to utilise the aforementioned skills is closely correlated with their health status and lifestyle conditions. The greater the health literacy of a person, the greater their chance of maintaining their wellbeing is. Here are some examples:

Mental Health:

Health literacy is a strong predictor of an individual’s capacity to identify and commit to healthy behaviours and avoid mental health consequences.

Chronic Disease Management:

People living with chronic diseases and with inadequate or marginal health literacy are less skilled in self-managing the daily responsibilities that their disease entails. As a result, focusing on people’s health literacy enables them to manage their illness.

Pregnancy and Parenting:

The adoption of healthy behaviours during pregnancy affects not only the mother and fetus, but also the child’s health due to epigenetic programming. A higher level of health literacy helps parents identify reliable content and practices within the world of health-related materials for pregnancy.

The Behaviours of Young People:

Increasing media literacy can improve health outcomes by reducing harmful alcohol or smoking behaviours or curbing unhealthy behaviours related to obesity and eating disorders.

Improving people’s health knowledge is important due to the distinct interplay between limited health literacy and poor health outcomes, resulting in higher health consequences as well as higher financial and social costs. An informed population is more likely to freely make better decisions around their health, demanding the best service, being accountable for the results, and more satisfied with their health status and overall wellbeing. Health literacy constitutes, then, increased health prioritisation to reduce inequalities and improve the health of all people.