October is Health Literacy Month

Health Literacy Month, celebrated each October, is a time when health literacy advocates around the world promote the importance of understandable health information. Started by Helen Osborne in 1999, this month is a time for all health literacy advocates to let the world know why health literacy matters.

Health literacy is defined in Healthy People 2010 as: "The degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions". The National Library of Medicine has a good web site that covers all aspects of Health Literacy.

Did you know that low health literacy is linked to higher rates of hospitalization and higher use of expensive emergency services? (Agency for Health Care Research and Quality Report, Literacy and Health Outcomes (January 2004)).

Or that more than half of patients reading at a sixth-grade level or less report they go to the Emergency Department when they have an asthma attack compared with less than a third of literate patients? Less than one third of patients with the poorest reading skills knew they should see a physician when their asthma was not symptomatic as compared with 90% of literate patients (Williams, MV, Chest, October 1998).

In metro Jacksonville there are many literacy programs at local public libraries. What does your library do about literacy?

Thanks for this guest post from Dee Baldwin at Find@BCBSF as we begin Health Literacy Month.