October is Health Literacy Month

Happy Health Literacy Month!

Health literacy is defined in two ways:

1. Personal health literacy is how well a person can find, understand, and use information and services to make decisions about their own health and the health of others.
2. Organizational health literacy is how well organizations equitably help all people find, understand, and use information and services to make decisions about their own health and others.

Health literacy practices, like using plain language, can help everyone make self-informed decisions about their health! Often, a medical professional will talk about a diagnosis, test being done, or even answer health questions using what is called medical “jargon”. This just means the word choices are unclear to someone who is not in the medical field.

 

Without being clear and concise with the communication, routine check ups or illness visits can become stressful. Many people may leave the doctors office feeling confused or scared! The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states, “Most measures of personal health literacy assess people’s ability to understand written health information and numbers. Using such an assessment in English, the only national health literacy measure found that over a third of adults in the U.S. have limited personal health literacy.” Other sources say over 80% of adults struggle to understand health information and make decisions regarding their own personal health. This month I will be sharing ways to improve your own health literacy.

Check out this useful tool to help clarify any confusing medical jargon: https://tools.cdc.gov/ewapi/termsearch.html

 

Get Healthy SHHS!