Health Literacy
Health literacy is a factor that has implications in all healthcare settings and for all patients (IOM, 2004). As mentioned elsewhere in this text, diver-sity is a key element of patient-centered care, but it is important to explicitly recognize it in terms of its relevance to public/community health as well. Patient education—whether from the perspective of individual patients, families, populations, or communities—is influenced by the relevant patient’s health literacy. One definition of health literacy is “the extent to which an individual is able to access and accurately interpret and evaluate health information,” which correlates with the earlier definition in a critical report on health literacy (Mitchell & Begoray, 2010). Effective health literacy improves self-management and engages the patient (individuals, families, populations, communities) in the process. Three key supporting interventions to better ensure health literacy are as follows (Sand-Jecklin, Murray, Summers, & Watson, 2010):
■Identify patients at risk for lack of understanding and not acting on health information.
■Communicate health information and instructions in a way that promotes patient understanding.
■Check for patient understanding.
