Health Literacy Improving Health, Health Systems, and Health Policy Around the World: Workshop Summary (2013) / Chapter Skim
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3 Health Literacy Perspectives
3 Health Literacy Perspectives
Pages 9-36
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From page 9... ...
Health literacy implies achievement of a level of knowledge, personal skills, and confidence to take action to improve personal and community health by changing personal lifestyles and living conditions, Kumaresan said. Kumaresan said that health education aims to influence individual lifestyle decisions and raise awareness of the determinants of health.
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From page 10... ...
Worldwide the level of health literacy is low. Kumaresan noted that people with low levels of health literacy are more likely to • ave a low level of information and communication technology lit h eracy and less access to the Internet and online health information, • ot be able to evaluate the quality of information from different n sources, and • ave lower use of preventive services and higher use of treatment h services resulting in higher health care costs.
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From page 11... ...
Mobile health technologies are important because their reach in developing countries is so much greater than other technology or health infrastructures. He said that in developing countries 11 million people have access to hospital beds and 305 million people have access to computers, but 2.2 billion people use mobile phones, and 40 percent of those users are in rural areas.
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From page 12... ...
The WHO partners with UN agencies to promote health literacy work. In February 2012, the WHO, in collaboration with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
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From page 13... ...
There can also be interaction with care providers and remote monitoring. WHO regional offices are closely involved in building health literacy, mobile health, and e-health efforts.
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From page 14... ...
. This definition can encompass mobile health information and e-health technologies.
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From page 15... ...
in Beijing, the ECOSOC issued a ministerial declaration stating, "We stress that health literacy is an important factor in ensuring significant health outcomes and in this regard, call for the development of appropriate action plans to promote health literacy."2 Several months later, Ratzan said, the Chinese health minister, during a speech in Geneva, Switzerland, said that health literacy is an important factor in ensuring positive health outcomes and called for the development of appropriate action plans to promote health literacy. In September 2011, a political declaration of the high-level meeting of the UN General Assembly on the prevention and control of NCDs was issued.
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From page 16... ...
Evolving competencies for 21st-century medical training provide an opportunity for increasing knowledge about health literacy, Ratzan said. Use of health checklists or scorecards and mobile health applications in the private sector are other avenues to improve health literacy.
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There are unparalleled scaling opportunities with online and mobile communication technologies that provide new promise and opportunities for advancing health literacy. Future options may include checklist tools that provide easily accessible, understandable, and actionable health information to patients and consumers of varying lev TABLE 3-1 Examples of Health Checklists Initiative Description Current Stage Central Line ICU Simple five-point Global rollout Checklist checklist to ensure safe insertion of central venous catheters; proven to significantly reduce central line infections WHO Surgical Safety Universally applicable Global rollout; in use Checklist (2007–)
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Roundtable on Health Literacy workshop on promoting health literacy to encourage prevention and wellness (September 2009) , Ratzan presented a paper that developed the theme of using scorecards to improve health and health literacy.
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From page 19... ...
FIGURE 3-4 A scorecard for health. SOURCE: Johnson & Johnson, 2012.
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New technologies provide better access and use of information, contributing to expanded health literacy globally and helping to relieve the burden on already strained health workers, Ratzan said. Mobile health or mobile health communication holds great promise as efforts at providing information are scaled up.
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From page 21... ...
Although the law is not health specific, it can be used to address health literacy in public health information. There is also a law related to the use of health information technology that, while not health literacy specific, is fundamentally changing the way that technology is being used to deliver health care in the United States, Baur said.
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From page 22... ...
Many publicly available tools can be used to assess the quality of health care services, and there is a health literacy module to assess providers' use of different health literacy and health communication strategies, Baur said. There are also a number of robust health information services.
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From page 23... ...
How can we promote organizational change to incorporate health literacy in our everyday practices? Organizational change must happen at the individual organization level but also in the broader sectors of industry, government, education, and nonprofit organizations.
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From page 24... ...
Both organizations are interested in improving lives, both value working in partnership with others, and both are principled in all approaches, Cabe said. Improving health is a priority for both companies, Thompson said.
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The program is called Arts for Behavior Change. It is a pilot program that uses the arts to help people understand what needs to be done to improve personal and household hygiene behaviors as well as how to use different disinfecting products.
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There was intensive and diverse community engagement throughout, Cabe said. One of the most interesting aspects of this arts program that used health literacy to improve household hygiene was the opportunity to work with a community of actors, singers, puppeteers, and dancers, Cabe said.
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From page 27... ...
• 54.4 percent of respondents said that there have been changes in household hygiene behaviors during the past 3 months. Of those, the majority said it was because of the performances (means of 3.15 on a 4-point scale)
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From page 28... ...
The change correlates with the performance messages, which featured why and how to clean food preparation areas, Thompson said. The Arts for Behavior Change pilot project demonstrated the effectiveness of community engagement and using performance arts to advance health literacy and improve health-related behaviors, Thompson said.
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From page 29... ...
Also, Kumaresan said, mobile health is a wonderful way to conduct outreach. For example, in 2010, for the World Health Day on urban health, the only way to reach people in Somalia was with text messages (1 million were sent to Somalia residents)
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From page 30... ...
The media is not just a conduit, but an ongoing purveyor of health information, Ratzan said. Another possible resource is the CTIA, a cellular telephone group that is working to scale up some mobile health pieces.
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That is what is needed for health literacy, he said. He asked, "How can we integrate new tools such as scorecards and checklists and mobile health messaging that could foster change on a larger scale?
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" It is interesting to note that the Ethiopian government now has a policy of one latrine per household. Len Epstein, a Roundtable member, asked how health literacy can more effectively integrate culturally and linguistically appropriate health and health care perspectives.
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Sabrina Kurtz-Rossi, a principal in a woman-owned small business specializing in health education, literacy, and evaluation, said she is interested in supporting professional and organizational development in the field of health literacy. Many people have come to identify themselves as health literacy professionals even though they come from many different professions and different kinds of organizations.
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Presentation at the Institute of Medicine Workshop on Health Literacy: Improving Health, Health Systems, and Health Policy Around the World, New York, September 24. Parker, R
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2012. Mobile phones for community health workers of Bihar empower adolescent girls.
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