What is Health Literacy? How to measure it? Why is it important?

Abstract

Health literacy, when the doctor gives a medical information to a patient, it is the ability of the patient to understand, interprete the medical information and act appropriately according to this ability. Patients confront with complicated informations and treatments. Limited health literacy effects diagnosis and treatments in negative way and causes unnecessarily hospitalizations and emergency service usage, unnecessary diagnostic tests, increased hospitalizations. Initially, health literacy seems like a nonphysical concept but then lots of scales have been improved for its measurement.

The Effect of Parents' Health Literacy Level on the Attitudes and Behaviors of Childhood Vaccinations

“…According to the World Health Organization, it is the cognitive and social skills of individuals about their ability to access, understand and use information to maintain healthy well-being and improve health, and their desires (WHO, 2014). Based on these definitions, health literacy is important for a person to correctly perceive and implement decisions about their health (Copurlar and Kartal, 2016). Because individuals with low level of health literacy use preventive health services less, cannot manage their chronic diseases well, and their access to care is limited (Copurlar and Kartal, 2016;Levy and Janke, 2016).…”

“…Based on these definitions, health literacy is important for a person to correctly perceive and implement decisions about their health (Copurlar and Kartal, 2016). Because individuals with low level of health literacy use preventive health services less, cannot manage their chronic diseases well, and their access to care is limited (Copurlar and Kartal, 2016;Levy and Janke, 2016). Studies show that people with low health literacy have difficulty in understanding the instructions, recommendations and health education of health professionals, and they may not have enough information about immunization (Smith et al, 2015;Cam et al, 2021).…”

The Most Important Component of Service Use in Health Care: Health Literacy

“…[3][4] Sağlık okuryazarlığı bireyin kendi sağlığını ve hastalığını tanımlayabilmesi, sağlığı ile ilgili uygun kararlar alabilmesi, sağlık sistemini nasıl kullanabileceğini bilmesini gerektiren geniş bir alandır. 4,5 Yetersiz sağlık okuryazarlığı sağlık hizmetlerini kullanmada yetersizliğe, ilaç kullanım hatalarında artışa, hastalığa yakalanma riskinde artışa neden olmaktadır. 3,6,7 Bununla birlikte sağlığı okuma, yorumlama ve anlama düzeylerinin artması sağlık kurumlarındaki gereksiz tedavi ve tekrarlı yatışlar azaltmakta, erken tarama sıklığını artırarak mortalite ve morbidite oranlarını azaltmaktadır.…”

Jinekolojik Kanserli Kadınların Brakiterapi Sonrası Cinsel İşlevinin Değerlendirilmesi ve Cinsel Danışmanlık

“…Ayrıca, bu bireylerin gereksiz acil servis kullanımlarının da arttığı görülmektedir. Tüm bunlar, gereksiz işgücü kayıplarına ve artmış sağlık harcamalarına neden olmaktadır (5). Çünkü sağlık okuryazarlığı hastaların semptomları yorumlamasına, bakımı doğru yönlendirmesine ve tedaviye karar vermesine katkı sağlar (6).…”