Post 9: Final Thoughts

As you have followed this blog, I hope you realize the significance of health literacy in sustaining a healthy society. As health educators, health literacy plays a major role in many aspects of our work with the community even if our main focus is something else such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, or obesity because we consider the level of health literacy of those we serve in order to better prepare appropriate programs or services. With that said, I hope that you will at least be an advocate of health literacy. How can you do that? Health educators act as an advocate first by understanding the current and emerging needs associated with health literacy. Healthy People 2020 can assist the health educator in understanding the health literacy efforts that will be most emphasized such as:

• Supporting shared decision-making between patients and providers.
• Providing personalized self-management tools and resources.
• Building social support networks.
• Delivering accurate, accessible, and actionable health information that is targeted or tailored.
• Facilitating the meaningful use of health IT and exchange of health information among health care and public health professionals.
• Enabling quick and informed action to health risks and public health emergencies.
• Increasing health literacy skills.
• Providing new opportunities to connect with culturally diverse and hard-to-reach populations.
• Providing sound principles in the design of programs and interventions that result in healthier behaviors.
• Increasing Internet and mobile access. (Healthy People, 2020).

Organizations such as the National Coalition for Literacy have responded to the goals of Healthy People 2020 and advocate on behalf of those goals for policy changes that will positively affect those most vulnerable because of low health literacy (National Coalition for Literacy, n.d.). Health educators can join the efforts of the National Coalition for Literacy to bring public awareness to health literacy. In the article Health Educators’ Role in Promoting Health Literacy and Advocacy for the 21^st Century, Tappe and Galer-Unti argue that health educators should build their advocacy skills by reading newspapers, learning about the policy process and engaging in community building and coalition development (2001).

Thank you for following my blog!