![[ Visit Client Website ]](images/banner.gif)
Saturday, 29 October 2011
Learning Objective 1: Identify determinants of population health and describe their potential impact on health outcomes.
Learning Objective 2: Discuss how the concept of health literacy can be viewed as a health problem resulting from these determinants, or, as a determinant of health itself.
Health literacy has been identified by the World Health Organization (WHO), Institute of Medicine (IOM), and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), as a significant problem impacting health outcomes. Health literacy is defined as the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions. Technological dependency, aging populations, low basic literacy levels, and prevalence of chronic conditions magnify health disparities and impact population health. A model, influenced by Evans & Stoddart’s Framework for Patterns of Determinants of Health (1990, 2003) is reviewed. Health literacy can be viewed as a health problem resulting from these determinants, or, as a determinant of health itself. Health literacy can also exist as a confounding factor for consumer decisions related to appropriate level of care, communication with provider and payer, understanding consumer information related to health, and treatment adherence. Thus, this model (Pawlak, 2005) outlines why health literacy is an important and complicated construct in clinical practice. Using this model, strategies and incentives for population health improvement impacted by health literacy are discussed.