Health Literacy Dilemma

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services defines Health Literacy as “the capacity to obtain, process and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.”

Poor health literacy among the American population is an area of growing concern for two key reasons:

1. Poor health literacy results in a reduction in the quality of health for our population
2. Deficiencies in health literacy contribute directly to the rapidly increasing costs of health care

Some Key Health Literacy Statistics:

• Nearly half of the U.S. adult population (90 million people) has low understanding of health concerns (National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) data)
• 11 million adults are non-literate in English (2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) data)
• Elderly consume more than 33% of all health care in the U.S. (National Bureau of Economic Research, “Designing Health Insurance for the Elderly.”)
• 7.8 million seniors can only perform the most simple and concrete literacy skills (2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) data)

People with lower health literacy have:

• Lower quality health status
• Lower adherence to treatments that result in an increased volume of medication/treatment errors
• Higher rates of health services utilization, including 29 – 69 % higher hospitalization rates
• Higher health care costs:
  • $50 – $73 billion in additional health expenditures annually
  • $7,500 more in annual health care costs for a person with limited health literacy, versus a person with higher health literacy skills

-2006 Partnership for Clear Health Communication