Health psychologists and other professionals can promote health literacy among patients and populations through education, outreach, and public health campaigns.

Grand Valley State University

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An individual or group's capacity to search for, understand, and incorporate health behaviors and resources into their lives. High literacy increases self-efficacy and adherence to healthy lifestyle changes, whereas low literacy can impede access to medical care and accurate information. 
The 3 main categories of health literacy are: functional, interactive and critical health literacy.

Health Literacy 

As the term indicates, health misinformation is misinformation related to health. Themes might be viruses, food safety, nutrition and vaccinations (Bode & Vraga, 2018; Chen et al., 2018; Lazer et al., 2018; Lewandowsky et al., 2012; Oh & Lee, 2019). These  misinformation can negatively affect people’s health behaviors (Chou et al., 2018; Oh & Lee, 2019). 

Health misinformation

Coined by Gonzalez et al. (2020), health information brokering and searching is the process of bilingual family members (usually children) finding, comprehending, and translating information from online sources to help English Language Learning (ELL) relatives reach health care services, learn about health behaviors, and navigate online health content, also known as eHealth sources. 
Searching for this information requires a degree of English proficiency and education, so children use this inter-generational communication process to bridge gaps in understanding for family members.

Information Brokering and Searching

Functional health literacy describes the basic knowledge and skills in health including literacy and numeracy skills to process health information such as reading food labels. Regarding weight loss, high functional health literacy has been linked to lower BMIs.

Functional Health Literacy

Interactive health literacy is the ability to apply health information and knowledge through supportive relationships. This includes accessing health services, engaging healthcare professionals to manage health, and securing social support. Inadequate, inconsistent, and dismissive care can lead to isolation and attrition.

Interactive Health Literacy

Critical health literacy builds on functional and interactive health literacies to advocate for individual and social health, such as making shared decisions on one’s health with health professionals. Partnership and personalization of health plans are critical to adherence. 

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