title: The Many Health Literacies: Advancing Research or Fragmentation?
abstract: Health literacy is the degree to which individuals can obtain, process, understand, and communicate about health-related information needed to make informed health decisions and is an important factor in patient health outcomes and resulting health care costs. Because of its importance across many areas of health, specific attention has been given to studying and measuring health literacy in recent years; however, the field lacks consensus on how health literacy should be defined and measured. As a result, numerous definitions and measures of health literacy exist. This fragmentation and inconsistency creates a barrier to conceptualizing, measuring, and understanding health literacy across health domains and fields. A directed literature search reveals a substantial body of work on health literacy; however, findings from studies often emphasize health literacy within specific health domains, populations, contexts, and languages, which makes the comparison of findings across studies difficult. While there is recognition that the measurement of health literacy should be improved, it is important to take into consideration what can be gained from a general health literacy focus and how this could be applied across domains.
authors.affiliation: a Stan Richards School of Advertising and Public Relations , University of Texas at Austin.|b Center for Health Communication , University of Texas at Austin.|c School of Public Health , University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mackert
authors.affiliation: a Stan Richards School of Advertising and Public Relations , University of Texas at Austin.
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Champlin
authors.affiliation: a Stan Richards School of Advertising and Public Relations , University of Texas at Austin.
authors.forename: Zhaohui
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Su
authors.affiliation: a Stan Richards School of Advertising and Public Relations , University of Texas at Austin.
authors.forename: Marie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Guadagno
mesh_terms: D015438:Health Behavior; D058015:Health Communication / Q000379:methods; D057220:Health Literacy / Q000379:methods* / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006801:Humans; D012106:Research / Q000458:organization & administration*; D020377:Self Efficacy; D009626:Terminology as Topic