It should be said that no amount of knowledge will protect you from illness. There are many health conditions that are completely out of your control, and very few that lifestyle changes will impact. Your health is not connected to your morals, values, or worth. You don't owe "good" health to anyone. Health Literacy is about maintaining your health more than improving it. Health Literacy also lessens the stigma that many of us have against people with poor health and/or disabilities.
Health Literacy is a set of skills that help people understand and make decisions about their health. Developing these skills is important because not having them leads to poor personal health, poor quality of health care, and a financial drain on the economy from additional costs of health care. The US Department of Health & Human Services named health literacy a social determinant of health (SDOH) because it affects a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks (Healthy People 2030).
Health Literacy is constructed from two definitions:
This guide is meant to be a resource for individuals looking to develop their personal health literacy. The following 3-element model illustrates the meaning of health literacy as described by Liu, et. al (2020) and provides the structure for this guide.
This refers to the understanding of information about health. Starting with reputable, peer-reviewed sources is key for this element of health literacy, but these sources must be translated into easily-digestible chunks.
This step highlights the access you have to information and your ability to process it. Communicating with a health professional is critical to accessing information and contextualizing what you have found. Additional skills and resources can increase your self-efficacy once you are more familiar with medical information.
Understanding the significance of following "doctor's orders" makes a difference in your health literacy. Consistently making choices that help maintain your health requires the previous two elements with the addition of self-regulation. This commonly happens in conversations with a health professional where you collaborate to find meaningful health goals and how to achieve them.
Setting health goals should always be done with a health professional that is familiar with your medical history. Everyone's health is unique to them, so following what "worked" for someone you know is much different from setting reasonable health goals.
