Health Empowerment Model

Health literacy is traditionally considered as an antecedent of patient empowerment in the health behavior literature. By contrast, the Health Empowerment Model (Schulz & Nakamoto, 2013) advocates that health literacy and empowerment are distinct concepts, however their effect on health outcomes are deeply intertwined. The model proposes that a patient having adequate health literacy skills coupled with high empowerment can become an effective-self manager of her own health. However, a mismatch between the concepts, i.e. a highly empowered patient without the necessary health literacy skills, is endangered to engage in harmful health