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Health Literacy: A Prescription to End Confusion

In April 2004, the Institute of Medicine released its groundbreaking report, Health Literacy: A Prescription to End Confusion. The IOM Report provides an overview of the scope and impact of low health literacy in the United States, and provides specific recommendations at the national level for addressing the issue. The release of the report was an important milestone for the Clear Health Communication movement because it validated the work that Pfizer and others have been doing to address a situation that impacts 90 million people in the United States and costs the health care system billions of dollars every year.
 
In the report, the IOM makes specific recommendations to the public and private sectors. These include:

• Support health literacy research, including research to explain the relationship between health literacy and the education system, the health system and other social and cultural systems; research to assess the effectiveness of different models combining health literacy and basic literacy and instruction.
• Support the development, testing and use of culturally appropriate new measures of health literacy.
• Support demonstration programs to establish the most effective approaches to reducing the negative effects of limited health literacy.
• Support the development of conceptual frameworks on the intersection of culture and health literacy.
• Develop and test approaches to improve health communication that foster healing relationships across culturally diverse populations.
• Educators should incorporate health-related tasks, materials and examples into existing lesson plans.
• Fund projects in states to attain National Health Education Standards and have accreditation requirements for these standards in all private and public educational institutions.
• Professional health-related schools and continuing education programs should incorporate health literacy into their curriculum and areas of competence.
• Health literacy assessment should be a part of the system; as such health literacy needs to be incorporated into accreditation standards.
• Develop standards for health literacy in research applications.

Review Health Literacy: A Prescription to End Confusion.

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