Literature review

Health literacy is an expeditiously advancing area, and its meaning has broadened to cover a range of concepts (Jordan, Buchbinder and Osborne, 2010). Health literacy was relatively a newly emerged concept in health promotion research, various problems that are associated with the health literacy, like self care and its relation to health outcomes was identified by the researchers in the recent years (Speros, 2005) and created awareness among health care professionals and governments on the role played by health literacy (Jordan, Buchbinder and Osborne, 2010). Low literacy skills are common in the wealthy countries, and it’s quite high in developing nations (Nutbeam, 2008). According to estimation, around ninety million people in USA have poor literacy and have problems in grasping and utilizing health related information (Hawkins, Kantayya and Sharkey-Asner, 2010; Mika et al., 2005). The possible behaviour of the patients and acknowledgement of the information receives in the health care environment and practices, plays a key role in supervising their own health and in monitoring their health status, this is the major factor that addresses the health literacy (Jordan, Buchbinder and Osborne, 2010, p.36). Finding more information on health literacy and the problems associated with it among people with health disparities is quite important (Mika et al., 2005.pg 351). Speros, (2005, p.634) mention that adequate preference is not given to health literacy, which is the most persuasive problem that acts as a wall between the health care systems and the successful functioning of a health consumer. This paper reviews the literature to find the impact of health literacy on individual health and the various approaches in measuring the health literacy.

Methodology: The database searches include, Web of Knowledge, Web of science and Nora to identify articles by using the key word ‘health literacy and its impact on health’. Search was limited to primary research peer reviewed journals with full text online, as health literacy is a recently evolved concept in health promotion (Speros, 2005) search is narrowed to latest years in between 2004 and 2011to address the latest trends and development the topic. Due to the lack of articles on this topic from a particular country, articles from the different parts of the world are selected. The search yielded eight thousand five hundred and twenty three articles published in English out of which twenty six articles were refined from the titles and abstracts. Among these twenty papers are filtered due to the specification of the content according to my criteria. Six papers were selected based on the information available in the article to propose a literature review. This paper consists of both qualitative and quantitative studies. Qualitative research helps in understanding the impact in an individual perspective and Quantitative studies helps in finding the data on the variables of the particular topic.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria: After reviewing abstracts, based on the key issues, a set of inclusion and exclusion criteria is generated. I restricted the search to more recent articles from 2005 to present, and I limited the studies to the articles which explain the impact of health literacy on public health or an individual’s perspective in regarding both personal care and clinical services. I generalised the subject by excluding the articles those don’t provide original data regarding health outcomes and measurement procedures, the articles that focus on the health literacy in a particular case like older people, pregnant woman, cancer patients etc. are filtered.

Health literacy and its relationship with health outcomes

World Health Org