Health literacy in pharmacy

Abstract

The U.S. National Literacy Act of 1991 defines literacy as “an individual’s ability to read, write, and speak English and compute and solve problems at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job and in society, to achieve one’s goals and to develop one’s knowledge and potential.”1 Health literacy goes beyond this definition to include the ability to use these skills to read and understand health-related information, such as medication labels and insurance forms.2 These skills are vital for patients to receive the highest quality of care; however, 90 million people (nearly half of all Americans) have limited health literacy skills.3 This number is based on the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), which for the first time included a component designed to specifically test adults’ ability to read and understand health-related information. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services uses the NAAL to evaluate progress toward the Healthy People 2010 goal “to improve the health literacy of persons with inadequate or marginal literacy skills.”4 Raising awareness about this issue is important, since the NAAL showed no change in the average overall literacy score between the most recent assessment in 2003 and the prior assessment conducted a decade earlier.5