Herschel S. Horowitz Center for Health Literacy
Introduction
September 2007: The Herschel S. Horowitz Center for Health Literacy has been established to address the major public health problem of poor health literacy and its effect on health outcomes; This is the nation's first academic based health literacy center and is devoted to improving health through the lifespan with emphasis on closing the health disparities gap. Research is needed to establish the nature of the causal relationships between and among the various factors including culture and society, education systems, health systems and health outcomes and costs and to develop effective interventions and health policy. Recognizing the impact of poor health literacy on health outcomes, the new School of Public Health recently held a workshop on health literacy - [http://www.sph.umd.edu/literacy/health_literacy.cfm ].
Background
Recent research on literacy and health suggest strongly that improving health literacy is one pathway for improving health. Health Literacy is defined as the ability to obtain, process, and understand basic information and services need to make appropriate health decisions. According to a recent [2003] national study, nearly one half of U.S. adults have difficulty understanding basic health information. This means that they can make only simple inferences and apply information from moderately dense text. The miss match between capabilities of a large part of the US public and the demands of the health care systems is clear. For example, most health care information including insurance forms, consent forms, health instruction or education and hospital or clinic signs are often complex, laced with medical/dental jargon and written at reading levels far exceeding the abilities of the majority of American adults. Research has shown that individuals with limited health literacy have higher rates of hospitalization, higher use of emergency services, lower use of preventive measures and increased mortality. Individuals with limited and marginal health literacy skills are routinely in our health care systems, yet little has been done to address this problem. The field of health literacy is a relatively new area of research and includes focusing on individuals, health care providers as well as policy makers. Health literacy research is gaining momentum, partially due to the Institute of Medicine’s Report: Health Literacy: a prescription to end confusion and NIH’s subsequent requests for proposals regarding health literacy.
Call for Applications for the Herschel S. Horowitz Endowed Chair in Health Literacy, School of Public Health, University of Maryland, College Park. To view the current job posting, click here
