For mothers at risk, someone to lean on, By John Leland, December 15, 2012, New York Times: “The tattoo below Joanne Schmidt’s right ear says ‘Jesus’ in Hebrew. On the back of her neck, under a short crop of dyed red hair, is a second tattoo that says ‘Bad Girl’ in Chinese. ‘That was from my earlier period,’ she said. On a drizzly December afternoon, Ms. Schmidt was in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx to visit Elizabeth De la Rosa, who is 19 years old, single and was about as pregnant as a person can be. On this day, which happened to be the date her baby was due, Ms. De la Rosa was living in her mother’s apartment, a surprise to Ms. Schmidt, 37, who had been visiting her since early in the pregnancy — sometimes at a homeless shelter, sometimes at Ms. De la Rosa’s aunt’s. Ms. De la Rosa and her mother had a history of bitter arguments, which had landed the daughter in counseling at age 14…”
Tag: Health literacy
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…”