Description/Overview: Health Literacy, 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 decision (Ratzan & Parker, 2000), is essential to successful self-care management. Recent literature reviews suggest that those with limited health literacy have less knowledge of their disease, poor self-care behaviors and worst health outcomes (Schillinger et al., 2003; Baker et al., 2002). Additionally, limited health literacy has been shown to be greatest among vulnerable groups such as the elderly, those with less education and minority groups (Nielsen-Bohlman, Panzer & Kindig, 2004). Major obstacles in planning and implementing interventions to improve health literacy in these vulnerable populations are: 1) a lack of systematic research on the development of culturally relevant disease specific health literacy assessment tools and 2) a lack of research on the development and efficacy of health literacy based interventions. The topics covered in this symposium aim to fill those gaps. Specifically, the first presentation will discuss the development of a cancer specific health literacy tool in a sample of Korean Americans. The second presentation will discuss the validation of an existing high blood pressure specific health literacy tool in a sample of Vietnamese Americans. The third presentation will discuss the development and methodological considerations for a low literacy, culturally-appropriate telehealth-based behavioral intervention for low income African Americans with heart failure. The fourth presentation will discuss the efficacy of a diabetes specific health literacy education intervention on a sample of Korean American immigrants. Cumulatively, these presentations aim to expand the science of health literacy instrumentation, as well as demonstrate the practical application and utility of health literacy based interventions.

Learner Objective #1: The learner will be able to understand methods used in developing and validating context specific health literacy instruments.

Learner Objective #2: The learner will be able to identify methods for developing successful health literacy based interventions.