Literacy skills are known from educational records but not used after school finishes yet could be great directors of health information content according to literacy levels.
General literacy skills: The National Adult Literacy Survey The National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) conducted by the US Department of Education in 1992 provides the most comprehensive view of the general literacy skills of American adults. The NALS tested a stratified national random sample of some 26,000 adults who were interviewed in their homes and asked to provide personal and background information and to complete a booklet of literacy tasks.
The NALS results were reported by dividing the literacy skills of subjects into five levels of difficulty according to their ability to use and understand text and numbers (Table 1).
1 At the lowest level of literacy skill, termed NALS level 1, individuals can only perform basic tasks such as signing their name or finding a word or fact in a short written article. Individuals at NALS level 1 are often considered “functionally illiterate.” Although they can perform some reading and writing tasks, their limited literacy skills prevent full functioning in today’s society.
Individuals in NALS level 2 have somewhat more advanced skills but are still substantially limited in their ability to read and understand text. They are considered marginally literate.
In contrast, persons at NALS levels 3, 4, and 5 have sufficient literacy skills to permit full functioning in society.
Those at NALS level 5, the most advanced literacy level, have well developed literacy skills that enable them to perform complex tasks, such as writing lengthy documents and extracting data from tables and graphs (Table 1)
(Health Literacy A Manual for Clinicians Part of an educational program about health literacy Author: Barry D. Weiss, MD University of Arizona College of Medicine, Tucson)
These literacy ranges are pretty standard throughout the world skewed by educational availability but caused by genetic determinants just as height and hair colour. Pictures and stories are helpful for residents with low literacy and maybe best produced by artists in cooperation with scientists, policy makers etc?
R
HIFA profile: Richard Fitton is a retired family doctor - GP. Professional interests: Health literacy, patient partnership of trust and implementation of healthcare with professionals, family and public involvement in the prevention of modern lifestyle diseases, patients using access to professional records to overcome confidentiality barriers to care, patients as part of the policing of the use of their patient data Email address: richardpeterfitton7 AT gmail.com
