Why health consumers need to be health literate

According to the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care, almost 60% of adult Australians have low individual health literacy.

The Government has made it a priority to ensure health literacy is recognised as a vital aspect of better health and higher quality of care. Various activities have occurred within and outside the health system in order to address health literacy, such as activities aimed at health promotion, health protection, disease prevention, health care maintenance, and systems navigation.

The development of a National Health Literacy Strategy is underway – it forms is one of eight immediate priorities under the National Preventive Health Strategy 2021–2030.

In Queensland, health services have developed health literacy strategies and actions plans which are informed by and aim to address the specific health literacy issues within their population.

What these strategies and plans have in common is a focus on embedding health literacy into high-level systems and organisational policies and practices, ensuring that health information is clear, focused and useable, and that interpersonal communication is effective between consumers and healthcare providers.

Where they are different, rests in the demographic, characteristics, and attributes which make up their populations and how they effectively respond to them.

Health literacy and population health

Understanding health literacy from a population health (health outcomes of a group of individuals) perspective, including the various strengths and weakness individual and groups may have, is a recognised information gap.

The National Health Preventative Strategy identifies priority populations who experience social inequalities and disadvantage resulting in health inequity. These groups include:

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
• Culturally and linguistically diverse people
• Lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, intersex and/or other gender diverse people
• People with mental health conditions
• Low socioeconomic groups
• People with disability, and
• People living in rural, regional, and remote areas

At the population level, low health literacy may be a factor to health inequalities among certain groups. Studies have shown a correlation between health literacy and a number of socioeconomic factors, including educational attainment, socioeconomic status, older age and ethnicity.

Understanding health literacy levels among the population, including vulnerable sub-population groups, would inform the development and delivery of consumable and effective health messages. There are a range of factors to consider when determining health literacy levels, beginning with gaining an understanding of the population group’s foundational, interactional and critical skills and how they learn about health information and act to manage their health.

Vulnerable population groups do not comprise standardised or generalised groups. A one-size-fits-all approach does not work in. Health and health care information needs to be developed with population groups and tailored to their needs.

How to measure health literacy is a matter that is being further explored in Australia. The last National Health Survey: Health Literacy was undertaken in 2018. It aimed to look at how proactively people engage in their own care and make their own decisions about their health. It sought to measure where people feel they are able to take responsibility for management of their health. A questionnaire covered what is considered to be the nine domains of health literacy:

1. Feeling understood and supported by healthcare providers
2. Having sufficient information to manage my health
3. Actively managing my health
4. Social support for health
5.  Appraisal of health information
6. Ability to actively engage with healthcare providers
7. Navigating the healthcare system
8. Ability to find good health information
9. Understand health information well enough to know what to do

In the future, part of the National Preventative Health Strategy includes the development of concise, valid and reliable measures to improve and monitor the national health literacy levels of Australians.

Health literacy and the COVID-19 pandemic

The pandemic highlighted the gap between health communication and the health literacy needs of both the wider population and in different communities.

Mass media, online networks and social media became the information sources and were relied on for information. Fighting misinformation in the time of the pandemic was a significant issue and there has been much research, discussion and public debate on the topic since about the impacts.

What has been highlighted in the research, and through public debate, is the importance of health literacy in the wider community.

While managing common health problems differs from epidemic situations, there is no question that the pandemic highlighted the importance of health literacy and communication.

To improve consumer health literacy in the future, there needs to be an understanding of where people seek health information from and what information they seek. Evidence-based dissemination strategies must be used to promote health information. This is not an easy task for health service providers in a post-pandemic world coupled with rapid advances in digital communication technology.

Improving consumer health literacy

Improving individual health literacy requires addressing the skills, knowledge, motivation and capacity of a person to access, understand, appraise and apply information to make effective decisions and take appropriate action about their health and care and take appropriate action.

Targeted health literacy campaigns are an effective way to improve health literacy to drive desired behaviours and improve health outcomes. Targeted, relevant, and compelling messaging can increase knowledge, attitude, motivation and participation.

Our five key actions for health services to determine and address health literacy are:

1. Review and assess how health literacy is tracking in the health service
2. Understand where consumers are getting their health information to learn or manage their health
3. Understand the gaps and barriers to health literacy and apply evidence-based practices to address them
4. Embed principles of health literacy in communication, including social marketing and campaigns
5. Create evidence-based appropriate materials through co-design with the intended audience.

Contact us

Phillips Group has a dedicated Health and Care Practice. We stay ahead of emerging industry trends around patient care, which are largely driven by digital transformation, public policy and evolving consumer needs and attitudes. We connect health and care business and organisations with consumers and communities by creating smart and insightful strategies and programs.

Connect with our Health and Care Practice Group Executive Director, Rebecca Williams today.