Health Literacy And Health Decision-Making

Maintaining individual health requires making appropriate health care decisions and is determined by one’s ability to access, comprehend, and successfully process said information; this is known as health literacy (Altin, Finke, Kautz-Freimuth, & Stock, 2014). Existing literature documents the importance of health literacy and the impact it has on obtaining adequate knowledge about health and medical issues, in turn impacting the health care decision-making process (Aboumatar, Carson, Beach, Roter, & Cooper, 2013). Research demonstrates that low health literacy minimizes an individual’s capacity to understand the causes and nature of illness, increases the likelihood of engaging in risky health behaviors, increases the likelihood of being
uninsured, decreases the capacity to control chronic disease, and decreases the ability of individuals to understand the probability and risk of not following medical directions (Aboumatar et al., 2013; Altin et al., 2014; Lindquist, Fleishe, Jain, Friesema, & Baker, 2012; Sentell, 2012; Taggart et al., 2012). Individuals at risk for low health literacy include the elderly, minority populations, persons with low educational aptitudes, persons with risky health behaviors, groups who hold different cultural beliefs, individuals with limited income, and those persons who do not speak a countries native language (Levy, Janke, & Langa, 2015; Mantwill, Monestel-Umaña, & Schulz, 2015; McCory & Mason, 2011; Sørensen et al., 2012). Research demonstrates that health professionals who use language that is not understood by patients can also negatively impact health literacy (Galiatsatos, Rios, Daniel, Colburn, & Christmas, 2015). Literature supports the hypothesis that health literacy is vital to understanding health and disease processes, improving patient involvement in the healthcare process, enhancing patient satisfaction within the healthcare environment, and improved overall healthcare outcomes.