Health Literacy in the US

Many Americans have poor health literacy, By Sandra G. Boodman, February 28, 2011, Washington Post: “An elderly woman sent home from the hospital develops a life-threatening infection because she doesn’t understand the warning signs listed in the discharge instructions. A man flummoxed by an intake form in a doctor’s office reflexively writes ‘no’ to every question because he doesn’t understand what is being asked. A young mother pours a drug that is supposed to be taken by mouth into her baby’s ear, perforating the eardrum. And a man in his 70s preparing for his first colonoscopy uses a suppository as directed, but without first removing it from the foil packet. Each of these examples provided by health-care workers or patient advocates illustrates one of the most pervasive and under-recognized problems in medicine: Americans’ alarmingly low levels of health literacy – the ability to obtain, understand and use health information. A 2006 study by the U.S. Department of Education found that 36 percent of adults have only basic or below-basic skills for dealing with health material. This means that 90 million Americans can understand discharge instructions written only at a fifth-grade level or lower. About 52 percent had intermediate skills: They could figure out what time a medication should be taken if the label says ‘take two hours after eating,’ while the remaining 12 percent were deemed proficient because they could search a complex document and find the information necessary to define a medical term…”