What is Health Literacy?
Health literacy is about how people can find, understand, and use health information
and services to make informed decisions about their health. It can be influenced or
informed by health and care services, everyday experiences and their community.
Health literacy has long been recognised as one of the key determinants of health.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines health literacy as “representing the
personal knowledge and competencies that accumulate through daily activities,
social interactions and across generations. Personal knowledge and competencies
are mediated by the organisational structures and availability of resources that
enable people to access, understand, appraise, and use information and services in
ways that promote and maintain good health and well-being for themselves and
those around them.” These competencies include a range of skills including literacy,
numeracy and digital capabilities.
The WHO also states that health literacy means being able to access, understand,
appraise and use information and services in ways that promote and maintain good
health and well-being. It emphasises that it means more than being able to access
websites, read pamphlets and follow prescribed health-seeking behaviours. It
includes the ability to think critically about, as well as the ability to interact and
express personal and societal needs for promoting health.
What is Organisational Health Literacy?
Organisational health literacy is the ability of a healthcare organisation to make
information and services easy to find, understand, and use, so people can make
good decisions about their health.
For organisations and health and care professionals, health literacy refers to how
well they support people to find, understand, and use information. This includes
making systems, communication, processes, and physical environments easy to
navigate, as well as ensuring staff communicate clearly, both verbally and in writing.
It also involves helping people make informed decisions about their health and care.
Underpinning this is a commitment from leadership, alongside supportive policies
and a culture that actively prioritises health literacy.
The case for tackling health literacy is well established. People with low levels of
health literacy are likely to die younger, experience longer periods of ill-health,
engage less with prevention services, struggle with managing a long term condition
and be re-admitted into hospital more often. Bearing in mind that lower health
literacy is linked to health inequalities in already underserved communities, our view
is that tackling it is an ethical responsibility. It is also an economic issue: poor health
literacy has been estimated to cost the NHS between 3 and 5% of its annual budget.
What is Digital Literacy?
This encompasses the ability to use digital tools, devices and platforms effectively,
safely and responsibly for communication, learning and accessing services. It
includes finding, evaluating, creating and sharing information, navigating online
environments, and understanding the implications of digital technology.
Digital Health Literacy is a combination of health and digital literacy and as more and
more services and content move online it is becoming increasingly important. It
covers the ability to access, understand, appraise and apply health information and
services from digital platforms including identifying trusted, evidence-based sources,
to support informed decisions about health and well-being.