Lots of work is being done around
the concepts of Health Literacy.
"Health literacy is about
how people understand information about health and health care, and how they
apply that information to their lives, use it to make decisions and act on it.
Health literacy is important
because it shapes peoples health and the safety and quality of health care. Low
levels of individual health literacy contribute to poorer health outcomes,
increased risk of an adverse event and higher healthcare costs"
From 2012, the Australian
Commission for Safety and Quality in Health Care have been conducting
consultations and reviews about Heath Literacy. Eventually a Health Literacy National Statement was developed.
In all this information, it is acknowledged
that 60% of adult Australians have non functional health literacy skills. This
is higher than the generally quoted 44% of people with non functional literacy,
as Health literacy does require additional skills, including understanding of
numbers and quantities, pros and cons of information, and also a higher number of less familiar words in the content. ABS#4228, 2013
It is also acknowledged that
people who are at higher risk of poor health and poor health outcomes, also
have poor educational attainment or are from poor socio-economic areas. They
are more likely to have chronic conditions such as chronic diabetes, obesity. It
has been shown time and again people with non functional literacy present to their
health practitioners at a later stage of their health issue, have less awareness
of warning signs or symptoms, have poorer uptake of intervention or following
the intervention accurately, and not surprisingly when you read this, have
poorer health outcomes.
Of interest is that Health
Literacy research parameters list a wide range of domains to consider to
improve health literacy. A 2015
paper is one like many which talks about measurement against 9 different domains to
determine Health literacy. These being
1) Feeling understood and
supported by healthcare providers;
2) Having sufficient information
to manage my health;
3) Actively managing my health;
4) Social support for health;
5) Appraisal of health
information;
6) Ability to actively engage
with healthcare providers
7) Navigating the healthcare
system;
8) Ability to find good health
information;
9) Understand health information
enough to know what to do.
You can see that domain 9 on this
list is about providing health information “enough to know what to do.” An interesting
statement. To date, this is usually seen as writing medical information, by
removing most of the most technical of terms from the documents, and using Plain
Language techniques. However, this is only going to improve the understanding
for a small number of people, who already have good literacy, but maybe have
little medical knowledge.
What about the 44% of the adult
Australian population (Similar % in Canada and UK, higher in US) who cannot
read to this level?
Health information must be
written in an Easy English style as well. Otherwise the many people who do not
have functional literacy, will still not be able to meaningfully access information
about their health. Who are these people?
The person in the street and/or
the person who may want to engage with their health practitioner or about their
health
· People with poor educational outcomes
· Early school leavers
· Hearing impaired or people from the Deaf community
· People with Mental Illness
· People with intellectual disability and/or learning
difficulties
· People with Dyslexia and other reading challenges
· People with diagnosed lifelong disabilities, eg:,
Cerebral Palsy.
· People with acquired disabilities eg: after a
stroke , after a car accident, dementia.
In addition, other people who
value Easy English are those who are
· highly stressed
· time poor
· with sick family members
· sick themselves.
Also people who have English as a
second language can and do value the availability of Easy English. Think of a
new migrant learning English, someone who has come from a refugee camp, or
someone who has not read much in English, even though they have been here for
many years.
Where is this health information
in Easy English?
There are a few places starting
to develop their resources in this vast area. But all health messages need to
include Easy English in their suite of accessible documents. How can you
educate the community if as many as 60% of people can not functionally read
your health messages?
These links will take you to some
work being done in the UK. Some is clear and easier to read than others, but
you can see it is quite different to the traditional information provided to patients
and people looking for information about their health.
Here is an example of Easy English
developed by Access Easy English in partnership with the Country Fire Authority Vic. It shows you how
information can be developed in everyday words so people can read, understand and
use the information meaningfully.
Call me to talk about how Easy
English can be included in your suite of health and education materials for
your patients and the wider community.
Cathy
Basterfield
Access
Easy English
Twitter:
@accesseasyengli
