The Role of Health Literacy in Relationship to Health Risks

Health Literacy Paper
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Health Literacy Paper
Health literacy describes an individual’s ability to access, understand, appraise, and apply health knowledge to make effective health choices. A high health literacy level is positively associated with improved health outcomes (Stormacq et al., 2020). Low health literacy is associated with increased health risks, mainly due to less information about medical conditions. In that way, the patient cannot know the ideal blood glucose or blood pressure. Less knowledge concerning medical conditions also makes it challenging to recognize the physical manifestations of common health conditions (Pfizer, 2021). In addition, low health literacy could undermine an individual’s capacity to conduct illness self-management, for example, understanding drug prescription labels.
Some populations are more vulnerable to health risks compared to others due to social and demographic characteristics that affect their health literacy skills. The social and demographic factors are considered healthy literacy antecedents and include those related to socioeconomic strata (e.g., educational attainment, income levels, and occupation), culture an...