The Importance of Health Literacy

The need to improve personal and institutional health literacy has grown in the last decade. This is due to the every increasing complexity of our health care system, services, and information being provided. Did you know that:

• Nearly nine out of 10 adults struggle to understand and use personal and public health information when it includes unknown or complex language.

• Lack of health literacy costs the healthcare system money and results in higher than necessary hospitalizations and deaths. Improving health literacy could prevent nearly 1 million hospital visits and save over $25 billion a year.

• Clear communication strategies and techniques are critical to improving health literacy. Clear communication means presenting concepts, words, numbers, and images in ways that make sense to the audience.

• It is important to test your health information with a subset of the intended audience and get their feedback on its effectiveness before you begin full-scale distribution of the item(s).

• Remember, clear, understandable communication builds trust with those you are seeking to reach. When your audience trusts you, they’re more likely to follow your call to action and recommendations.

• Using clear communication advances health equity. Employing jargon or acronyms creates micro barriers to learning for many populations.

• Clear communication streamlines the translation process. That means you can more quickly share your information with people who are non-native English speakers and readers.