A bulletin board in the hallway of the Student Health Service offers tips to wellness. Student Health Service is located in the Student Health/Cheney International Center Building.
The people of the United States have an increasingly apparent struggle maintaining high health literacy.
“When I think of health literacy, I think of people understanding about an illness that they may be presented with and appropriately utilizing medications that have been prescribed for them,” Director of Student Health Services Joanne Steane said.
The Institute of Medicine defines health literacy as “the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions,” a skill that not everyone possesses.
According to the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, 30 percent of adults who receive Medicaid have below basic health literacy. The NNLM also found that about 36 percent of adults in the United States have limited health literacy and only 12 percent of the population is proficient.
Health literacy is particularly problematic for the elderly, usually people who are 65 and older. The NNLM reported that 71 percent of the population over 60 has difficulty using print materials and 80 percent have difficulty using documents such as forms or charts. This is particularly concerning because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that by 2030, 71.5 million adults in the United States will be over the age of 65.
Low health literacy is such an issue that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has implemented the National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy. The plan recognizes low health literacy as a problem for racial and ethnic groups, immigrants, people with less than a high school degree or GED, and people with incomes at or below the poverty level.
To combat the problem, the plan has a set of seven goals to help develop health and safety information that is accurate, promoting changes in the health care delivery system and increasing the dissemination and use of evidence-based health literacy practices and interventions.
However, it is difficult to say if low health literacy is becoming more of a problem in the United States or Wyoming, Steane said.
Steane says health literacy should be part of the responsibility of health care professionals, but should receive attention outside the health care profession.
“Directing people to good sources of health information and having clinicians be good sources as well as all health care professionals [is a start],” Steane said. “I think it’s incumbent on all of us to be good health care educators, but not everyone comes in contact with these professionals. That’s why education outside of the health care system is important.”
