Health Literacy is about a person’s ability to understand and use information to make decisions about their health.
Many adults across Derbyshire have low health literacy. This means they will struggle to read and understand health information.
Anyone can struggle with poor health literacy at any time, but particularly when in stressful and anxious situations. However, low health literacy is more common in some groups including:
- Those with long term conditions
- Older people
- Those in low socioeconomic groups
- Those with disabilities
- Those from ethnic minority backgrounds.
It is a basic need for people to understand more about their health and wellbeing. Yet almost half of all adults have limited health literacy and struggle to understand everyday health information.
Providing reliable easy-to-understand health information can help people to:
- make the best decisions about their health
- be more confident to take an active part in planning their own care.
Arming people with greater knowledge and understanding about their health can have a huge impact on how they:
- respond to treatment
- recover from illness
- manage a long-term condition.
