Health Literacy in Primary Health Care

Abstract

Health literacy is fundamental if people are to successfully manage their own health. This requires a range of skills and knowledge about health and health care, including finding, understanding, interpreting and communicating health information, seeking of appropriate care and making critical health decisions. A primary health system that is appropriate and universally accessible requires an active agenda based on research of approaches to address low health literacy, while health care providers should be alert to the widespread problems of health literacy which span all age levels. This article reviews the progress made in Australia on health literacy in primary health care since health literacy was included in Australia's health goals and targets in the mid-1990s. A database search of published literature was conducted to identify existing examples of health literacy programs in Australia. Considerable work has been done on mental health literacy, and research into chronic disease self-management with CALD communities, which includes health literacy, is under way. However, the lack of breadth in research has led to a knowledge base that is patchy. The few Australian studies located on health literacy research together with the data about general literacy in Australia suggests the need for much more work to be done to increase our knowledge base about health literacy, in order to develop appropriate resources and tools to manage low health literacy in primary health settings.

Factors influencing health care utilisation among Aboriginal cardiac patients in central Australia: a qualitative study

“…Low levels of health literacy have been found to negatively affect health outcomes and is considered to be a more accurate predictor of health status than determinants of health such as, socioeconomic status, education, employment, race or gender [34]. Low literacy skills also predict the degree with which individuals engage in the health system and their understanding of their chronic illness [35]. There is an urgent need for health literacy to be integrated at the system level to improve patients’ quality of care and health outcomes.…”

An ethnographic action research study to investigate the experiences of Bindjareb women participating in the cooking and nutrition component of an Aboriginal health promotion programme in regional Western Australia

“…Thus, in this context the newly learned skills enabled the participants to overcome contextual issues that were potentially influencing their thinking and behaviour and that were forestalling their intentions to become proactive and self-determined in their well-being (48) . Research in the Aboriginal context relating to the development of health literacy suggests that individuals who experience increased self-efficacy and competence, autonomy (identified relevance to personal needs) and feel relatedness (behaviours modelled, valued or prompted by significant others) are more likely to be selfdetermined in relation to their health (48)(49)(50) . The present study also identified potential barriers to successful development of community empowerment and governance through the ongoing effects of local family tensions and community mistrust of outside individuals, groups and/or organisations (37,(51)(52)(53)(54) .…”

Examining Patient-Centered Communication and Access for Veterans With Disabilities

“…Health literacy is defined as the capacity to obtain, process, and use basic health information and services needed to make health decisions. 33 44 Another issue that is applicable to veterans is mental health literacy, which incorporates the ability to recog nize specific disorders; knowledge of causes, risk factors, self-treatments, and available professional help; as well as attitudes that promote recognition and appropriate help seeking.45 Related to health literacy and health commu nication, studies of subpopulations of veterans have found that female veterans often have problems managing numeri cal information regarding the benefits of mammograms46; whereas, outpatient veterans showed lower numeracy scores than those at a University-based clinic.47 Further, inadequate health literacy in primary care veterans was a predictor of worse satisfaction with health care after adjusting for patient sociodemographics. 48 One study examined the distribution of health literacy numeracy and graph literacy for African-American and older veterans.…”