Health Literacy

The Animated Patient™ Series - Understanding Patient Health Literacy and Levels of Communication:

  • An important impediment to patient education is that of low health literacy. (1)
  • The AMA recommends health information be presented at a Grade 6-8 level to overcome health literacy challenges.
  • The Institute of Medicine cites that over 90 million Americans are subjects of low health literacy (2) which has been shown to contribute to poor health outcomes.
  • Between 46% - 51% of American adults are not “able to locate information in text”, cannot “make low-level inferences using printed materials”, and are unable to “integrate easily identifiable pieces of information”. (3)
  • Patients are often overwhelmed by complex medical concepts, scientific aspects of their disease, complicated lifestyle interventions; many patients cannot keep up with the rapidly evolving pace of information related to their own illness and its treatment. (4,5)
  • As many as 50% of Americans fail to take their medications as prescribed which in turn incurs grave consequences for health systems. (6)
  • Better patient education resources are needed to help patients overcome health literacy issues, improve self-management actions, and engage patients in making informed choices.
  • The Animated Patient series addresses health literacy, helps patients better self-manage their health, and understand complex medical information – The Animated Patient series uniquely proves to improve health outcomes of patients using this educational program series.

References:

  1. Roter DL. Patient Literacy: A Barrier to Quality of Care. J Gen Intern Med. 1998 (12) 850 – 851.
  2. Wilson M. Readability and patient education materials used for low-income populations. Clin Nurse Spec 2009 23(1) 33-40.
  3. National Adult Literacy Survey; US Department of Education Adult Literacy in America, Third Edition, National Center for Educational Statistics, April 2002, nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93275.pdf
  4. Study: Cancer Patients Increasingly Confused by Internet Health Information; Trust in Physicians Growing. Oncology Times. 2010. 32(11) 43-44.
  5. Colombo C, et al. Web Search Behavior and Information Needs of People with Multiple Sclerosis: Focus Group Study and Analysis of Online Postings. Interact J Med Res. 2014. 3(3): e12.
  6. Himmel, D. Educate before you Medicate; the NCPIE Coalition; Prescription Solutions.
  7. Nienkamp M (2006). Visual Learning Tools Overcome Health Illiteracy. Patient Safety and Quality Healthcare: www.psqh.com/julaug06/visual.html.

 

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