A tale of two health literacies: public health and clinical approaches to health literacy.

@article{citeulike:2733373, abstract = {Public health concerns underlie a considerable portion of the global burden of disease, increasing the utility and need for promoting and assessing the knowledge about public health issues. Health literacy is generally agreed upon as a means to find, understand, analyze and use information to make better decisions about health and to ultimately reduce inequities in health. A public health literacy knowledge scale was tested in China, Mexico, Ghana and India. A somewhat unexpected finding, which was that experts 'scored' less on the scale than the general public, led to consideration of differences between clinical and public health approaches to health literacy and their implications. These differences in perspective, for instance consideration of single case effects versus impacts at the societal level, pose significant challenges to developing and assessing health literacy. We suggest that a comprehensive approach to health literacy will include both clinical and public health approaches.}, address = {1Department of Human Ecology and Extension Department of Family and Community Health Sciences, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 55 Dudley Road \#207, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA.}, author = {Pleasant, Andrew and Kuruvilla, Shyama }, citeulike-article-id = {2733373}, doi = {10.1093/heapro/dan001}, issn = {1460-2245}, journal = {Health promotion international}, keywords = {clinical, health, literacy, public}, month = {January}, posted-at = {2008-04-29 11:08:31}, priority = {2}, title = {A tale of two health literacies: public health and clinical approaches to health literacy.}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/heapro/dan001}, year = {2008} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:2733373 L3 - citeulike-article-id:2733373 TI - A tale of two health literacies: public health and clinical approaches to health literacy. JF - Health promotion international AD - 1Department of Human Ecology and Extension Department of Family and Community Health Sciences, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 55 Dudley Road #207, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA. SN - 1460-2245 N2 - Public health concerns underlie a considerable portion of the global burden of disease, increasing the utility and need for promoting and assessing the knowledge about public health issues. Health literacy is generally agreed upon as a means to find, understand, analyze and use information to make better decisions about health and to ultimately reduce inequities in health. A public health literacy knowledge scale was tested in China, Mexico, Ghana and India. A somewhat unexpected finding, which was that experts 'scored' less on the scale than the general public, led to consideration of differences between clinical and public health approaches to health literacy and their implications. These differences in perspective, for instance consideration of single case effects versus impacts at the societal level, pose significant challenges to developing and assessing health literacy. We suggest that a comprehensive approach to health literacy will include both clinical and public health approaches. KW - clinical KW - health KW - literacy KW - public AU - Pleasant, Andrew AU - Kuruvilla, Shyama PY - 2008/01/25/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/heapro/dan001 ER -