What is Health Literacy?
Health literacy is about how people understand health information and how they use it to make choices about their health.
There are two parts to health literacy:
- individual health literacy is about how a person’s skills enable them to understand health information and use this information to make choices about their health
- health literacy environment involves all parts of the health system which affect people’s access to health services and information. The environment can include policies, physical space, people and more.
Why is Health Literacy important?
Almost 60% of Australians have low health literacy.
People with low health literacy are:
- up to three times more likely to have poor health outcomes
- more likely to need to go to the hospital
- less likely to take part in preventative health (such as cancer screening and vaccines)
- at higher risk of premature death
If we improve health literacy, we will:
- improve people’s health and quality of life
- empower people to take care of and improve their own health
- help to lower costs to the health system and to people who access it
What is our role in Health Literacy?
We are working with community, primary care and service providers to:
- encourage health information that is easy to understand
- ensure the services we commission build the health literacy of the community
- develop the skills of primary care workers in the Nepean Blue Mountains to improve communication with their patients
- include health literacy strategies within our core activities
Our Health Literacy Framework sets a clear, long-term approach to ensuring people in our region can access, understand and use health information to make informed decisions about their care. It is built on three integrated domains:
- providing accessible and responsive health information
- embedding health literacy into systems and services
- building capability through education and training.
By working collaboratively with primary care, service providers and the community, the framework supports health-literate environments and guides us to achieve equitable access to care for all.
Links and resources
Tips, links and resources for primary care and service providers:
- consider using plain language that avoids jargons and acronyms. The Plain Language Thesaurus helps with this by assessing the comprehension and health literacy level of your documents or resources and suggesting changes where appropriate
- using communication aids such as pictures or demonstrating with models can complement health information
- the TeachBack method helps to check for understanding by asking a patient to repeat back what they heard in their own words. Free training is also available via the TeachBack website
- some people might benefit from using an interpreter. National Translator and Interpreter Services are free to use. It’s important to ensure to adjust communication when using an interpreter
- adopt a Universal Precautions Approach which assumes most people will not understand the information and advice provided to them
- make sure health information handouts are easy to understand. To check, primary care and service providers can ask for feedback from the patient on whether the information is clear and/or use a readability checker to review the text. We recommend the Health Literacy Editor
Community:
The healthdirect symptom checker can help you identify your health concern, find appropriate treatment and provides you with easy-to-understand information to communicate to your health provider:
Taking a pen and paper and making notes throughout your consultation can also help with understanding, recall and next steps. Asking questions and repeating what you have heard to your doctor can help clear up any confusion and make sure you have a thorough understanding of what your health condition or concern is, treatment advice and management (if relevant).
