Health Literacy

What is health literacy?

Health literacy is about a person’s ability to understand and use information to make decisions about their health.

A user with low health literacy will generally struggle to:

• read and understand health information
• know how to act on this information
• know which health services to use and when to use them

Research shows that:

• more than 4 in 10 adults struggle with health content for the public
• more than 6 in 10 adults struggle with health content that includes numbers and statistics

This is because a lot of health content is written, often unintentionally, for people with higher health literacy skills.

Why health literacy is important

Low health literacy has been linked to a range of important problems.

These include:

• unhealthy lifestyles and poor general health
• low use of preventative services, like vaccinations and screening
• difficulty taking medicines correctly
• increased A&E attendances and hospital admissions
• reduced life expectancy

It’s estimated that health literacy-related problems like these account for up to 5% of national health spending.

Health literacy is also a health inequality issue. There is a close link between socio-economic deprivation and low health literacy.

The Regional Health Literacy Forum (RHLF)

This Forum has been brought together again to work on health literacy awareness and to lead the way forward for health literacy within Northern Ireland.

Member organisations

Health Minister, Mike Nesbitt explains why Health Literacy is important:

• https://x.com/healthdpt/status/1975501000430825943
• https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7381267044606038016

Check out the resources below to learn more about health literacy!