Health Literacy

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Recommended: Theoretical concepts explaining health literacy and outcome

More than 40 years ago, the term of health literacy introduced for the first time (1, 2) and as a means to enhance health outcomes and alleviate health inequalities has been considered for its significant role in health education and health promotion (3). Regard to the complex and evolving concept of health literacy and based on different perspectives, various definitions have been developed (1, 4, 5). However, it usually refers to personal competencies for access to, process and act on health information and services to make sound decisions and maintain good health (6). Most of the health literacy studies took place in medical setting showed that low health literacy is resulted in poorer health outcomes, health disparities, and increased health …show more content…

In public health, health literacy is assumed as an asset which can reduce health disparities (14) and develop social capital (12). It brought together the fields of education and health and built a framework to enhance individuals' abilities to achieve good health across life course(15, 16). Due to this view point recently a more comprehensive definition is provided by the Health Literacy Score (HLS)-Eu Consortium as "Health literacy is linked to literacy and entails people’s knowledge, motivation and competences to access, understand, appraise and apply health information in order to make judgments and take decisions in everyday life concerning health care, disease prevention and health promotion to maintain or improve quality of life during the life course" (5). Most researchers agreed that health literacy is related to the context so different settings maybe need different assessment tools. Despite of great works on development and examine of health literacy assessment tools in clinical setting (17), few studies have addressed adolescent health literacy (18) specially in school context (19), mainly due to the lack of comprehensive definition and proper assessment tool

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