Health literacy is vital to good health and wellbeing. It is fundamental to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and is a crucial tool to deliver universal health coverage. People need to know how to prevent disease and navigate health-care systems to ensure good health outcomes. However, many are not able to make healthy choices, even in countries with the strongest health systems. Why is this? Traditionally, health literacy has focused on an individual’s ability to access, understand, appraise, and use information to maintain good health. Of course, such knowledge is important. But this approach neglects the societal and structural forces that shape our choices. In many parts of the world, health decisions occur within the family. The health of communities is often dictated by social and environmental factors outside the control of individuals. Research progress in these areas has been slow, and many health interventions still leave people behind. The result has been a health failure.

As per this interesting editorial in the Lancet, “Every person has a right to health. The ability to realise that right depends on everyone understanding their health, being able and empowered to make healthy choices, and being able to access effective interventions. Without understanding the ways that neglected communities learn, more people will be left behind. Most importantly, policy makers need to understand health literacy and how their decisions will impact different populations. A whole-of-society approach to health literacy is needed to remedy these issues. But it will be doomed to failure if it does not account for and address the fundamental drivers of what shapes our understanding of health and what makes our societies unhealthy in the first place—not least, the commercial determinants of health.”1

You can read the full text here.

References

  1. The Lancet. (2022). Why is health literacy failing so many? The Lancet, 400(10364), 1655. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(22)02301-71

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