PHAR4823 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Health Literacy, Numeracy, Self-Care
23 Jul 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Literacy - ability to read and write to perform tasks. It is content and context specific (financial, legal, computer and health literacy) Health literacy represents the cognitive and social skills, which determine the motivation and ability of individuals to gain access to understand and use information in ways, which promote and maintain good health. Health literacy means more than being able to read pamphlets and successfully make appointments. By improving people"s access to health information and their capacity to use it effectively, health literacy is critical to empowerment. Basic/functional health literacy - basic skills in reading and writing. Communicative/interactive health literacy - more advanced cognitive and literally skills, together with social skills, can extract information and derive meaning. Critical health literacy - more advanced cognitive and literacy skills, together with social skills, can critically analyse information. Australian adult literacy and life skills survey 2006 (nationally rep. sample adults aged 15-74 years): 46% had very poor" or marginal" literacy skills.
