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COPYRIGHT 2004 Thomson Financial Inc.
In the 21st century, there's plenty of reason for policymakers to worry, if Americans aren't sufficiently "health literate" to make sense of written and oral health-care and medical information.
Current policy goals that depend heavily on health literacy range from eliminating racial and ethnic health disparities to slowing Medicare cost trends and improving its benefits by offering a broad menu of care-delivery options. As if that weren't enough, many also pin hopes for achieving long-term cost savings and improving quality on chronically ill people managing their own conditions and patients choosing the most cost-effective health plans, treatments, or providers, based on detailed quality data.
The bad news, delivered this month in reports from the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality and an Institute of Medicine Panel, is that a high proportion of Americans can't make use of the health information they see today, let alone meet the even higher demands many policymakers envision in our future.
"Current evidence reveals a mismatch between people's skills and the demands of health systems," write the IOM authors of Health Literacy: A Prescription To End Confusion.
And the mismatch matters. AHRQ's evidence review finds much more research is needed on how low literacy affects health and what interventions help. Nevertheless, the agency's Evidence-Based Practice Center at RTI International-University of North Carolina also concludes that low literacy is associated with bad outcomes, including "low health knowledge, increased incidence of chronic illness, poorer intermediate disease markers, and less than optimal use of preventive health services."
The good news, if there is any, is that AHRQ, IOM, the American Medical Association, and a growing phalanx of others are on the case,...
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