A Definition and Operational Framework for Health Numeracy

Linguistic barriers in diabetes care

“…Patients classified as having a low health literacy less frequently have a basic knowledge of diabetes care [7] and more frequently have a high HbA 1c level and retinopathy [8]. Health numeracy refers to 'the degree to which individuals have the capacity to access, process, interpret, communicate, and act on numerical, quantitative, graphical, biostatistical, and probabilistic health information needed to make effective health decisions' [9]. Patients with a low level of numeracy have a lower ability to perform a number of tasks required for their treatment, such as carbohydrate counting, identification of self-monitored blood glucose values within the target range and adjustment of insulin doses [10].…”

Do Patient Preferences for Health Information Vary by Health Literacy or Numeracy? A Qualitative Assessment

“…Persons with high health literacy are better able to prevent and manage disease relative to persons with limited health literacy (Berkman et al, 2011). Health numeracy, a subset of overall health literacy, is defined as the degree to which individuals have the capacity to assess, process, interpret, communicate, and act on numerical quantitative, graphical, biostatistical, and probabilistic health information needed to make effective health decisions (Golbeck, Ahlers-Schmidt, Paschal, & Dismuke, 2005). Several healthrelated tasks, such as understanding risk/benefit information, understanding food labels, management of weight, portion-size estimations, or interpreting blood sugar and/or blood pressure levels, essential for prevention and management of conditions related to cardiovascular disease such as obesity, hypertension, and diabetes, depend heavily on numeracy Huizinga, Beech, Cavanaugh, Elasy, & Rothman, 2008).…”

Development and Validation of the Spanish Numeracy Understanding in Medicine Instrument

“…Health numeracy is one domain of the general construct of health literacy, 1 with theoretical frameworks identifying a range of skills encompassed by the construct including basic number sense, use of tables and graphs, and concepts of probability and statistics. [2][3][4][5] Previous studies reporting an association between low health literacy and poorer health outcomes have used measures that incorporate both print and numeric domains. 6 However, an emerging literature supports the association of skills in the health numeracy domain to health-related outcomes including accuracy of risk perceptions, 7,8 ability to interpret of risk information, [9][10][11][12] identification of high quality care options, 13 decreased susceptibility to framing biases, 14 reduced hospitalizations for asthma, 15 improved anticoagulation control 16 and management of diabetes 17 and increased medication management for HIV infection.…”

“…[2][3][4][5]30 While there are health numeracy measures available, they vary in their area of focus and whether they assess knowledge, skills, and/or preference for use of numbers or the full range of skills an adult needs to understand and use numbers in decision making and medication administration. 11,15,16,[31][32][33][34][35][36][37] Relatively few health numeracy specific measures that have been translated into Spanish.…”