Writing result-oriented ad copy is difficult, as it must appeal to, entice, and convince consumers to take action.
igh blood pressure, or hypertension, is also called the Silent Killer. It has very few symptoms that you can see or feel. But the health problems that can result from untreated high blood pressure — like a stroke, heart attack, memory loss, or heart failure — are very real.
You might think that if high blood pressure runs in your family, there’s nothing you can do about it.
You might not want to give up your favorite foods or not-so-healthy habits.
You could choose not to do anything at all about it.
You can’t control everything that raises high blood pressure risk, but there is a lot you can control.
Choose to act. It’s never too late to get your blood pressure checked and start treatment if you need it.
This is an example of the engaging healthcare infographics available to users of The EdLogics Platform, a gamified space that improves employee engagement and health literacy.
View, share, download, and print our huge collection of free infographics on a variety of topics, from preventing and managing common health problems tonavigating the healthcare system.
Contact us to learn how to get access for your organization.
Mr. Garcia is a 65-year-old man with prediabetes.
He’s just retired and moved to a new area. At his first visit with his new primary care doctor, a nurse asks if he can usually understand a doctor’s instructions.
“Absolutely,” he says. “I understand perfectly.”
But does he really?
Situations like this highlight the importance of measuring two kinds of health literacy — how much a patient thinks they know compared to how much they actually know. If doctors measure just one kind of health literacy, they may not realize how much a patient understands and how well they can follow basic health advice..
Better understanding might allow Mr. Garcia to act sooner. He might get treatment or make healthier choices — and avoid diabetes. Smart changes now could mean avoiding the pain and expense of a chronic health problem later.
That’s why, when possible, it’s best to measure both subjective and objective health literacy.
Subjective health literacy measures how health literate someone thinks they are.
You can gauge subjective health literacy with questions like:
“How confident are you in filling out medical forms by yourself?”
The nurse in the story above was measuring subjective health literacy, albeit informally. The questions don’t have objectively correct answers, which may feel less threatening to the patient. It doesn’t feel like a test you’d take in school.
But there are disadvantages too. People often overestimate their own ability. And they may tell you what they think you want to hear. In other words, they may report strong health literacy even if they rarely understand or act on what a doctor tells them.
A patient has to actually demonstrate factual knowledge to measure objective health literacy. One popular tool, The Newest Vital Sign, shows the patient a nutrition label and asks how many calories they’d get by eating multiple servings, as well as other basic questions.
With objective health literacy, you know patients aren’t overestimating their own ability, or telling you what they think you want to hear. But because there are right and wrong answers, some patients feel like they’re back in school, and the memories aren’t always pleasant.
EdLogics measures — and strives to cultivate — improvements in both kinds of health literacy.
We use only validated surveys. When we measure objective health literacy, we present questions a little differently, making them fun, adding graphics, and incorporating great design. It’s all gamified and has fun incentives to encourage continued engagement. You can even win cash drawings, where the more you play, the more likely you are to win.
Users do not feel like they’re back in school.
By measuring both types of health literacy, we put ourselves in the best position to understand how health literacy changes over time. This can help us further refine our suite of health literacy education games, and be even more effective in our mission to improve health literacy.
A version of this article was originally published 7/6/2017.
ospital emergency departments, as the name implies, are meant to be used for true emergencies.
Unfortunately many trips to the ER are not life-threatening. Many are, in fact, both unnecessary and avoidable.
A study published in 2013 found that:
Low health literacy leads many patients to the ER when they could have received care at a less expensive setting – like at their doctor’s office or at a walk-in clinic. It’s also known that patients with low health literacy are more likely to make return visits to ERs within two weeks.
Some barriers for patients with low literacy include:
More recent research, presented at the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Annual Meeting in Orlando, explored how low health literacy was related to preventable ER visits. The study looked at over 1,200 participants and a total of 4,444 ER visits. Over 10% of the visits were found to have been preventable.
Of the preventable visits, over 60% led to hospital admission. The average cost of a hospital stay is estimated to be close to $10,000.
When researchers looked at the health literacy of the participants, those with lower health literacy were over twice as likely to have made a preventable ER visit. Having below an eighth-grade reading level was the definition used for low literacy.
The most common preventable conditions leading to ER visits included chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), urinary tract infections and long-term complications from diabetes.
While not surprising, the study illustrates that patients with low literacy are more likely to make preventable visits to ER and other emergency services. And increasing the literacy of patients can help dramatically decrease unnecessary healthcare costs.
A version of this article was originally publshed 10/09/2017.
doctor prescribes an antibiotic for a toddler’s first ear infection. Eager to help their daughter, the girl’s parents pick up the medicine on their way home. Frantically, they open the bottle and start to pour the thick pink liquid into the crying child’s ear.
The problem: It should have gone in her mouth.
This story is a classic in the health literacy community. While obvious errors like this aren’t the norm, millions of patients do make dangerous healthcare mistakes every year.
That means they have trouble finding, understanding, and using health information to make informed decisions about their health.
You can’t blame them. Even though most healthcare professionals are committed to educating their patients — including those with limited health literacy — we don’t always do a great job of it.
Here’s one example:
In a 2009 New England Journal article, Ruth Parker tells the story of two parents—one of whom was a physician—who struggled to understand the instructions for their child’s flu medication. The directions were so unclear that the physician had to solve a complex equation to figure out the right dose.
It’s not surprising that millions of patients with limited health literacy can’t interpret medication labels correctly, or use other health information to help prevent and manage disease.
These health literacy issues have been linked to serious health consequences. Adults with limited health literacy get fewer mammograms and flu shots. They have more ER visits and hospitalizations. They cost much more to the healthcare system. And they don’t understand their health conditions as well as people who are health literate.
Health literacy should matter to you if:
1. You have a chronic condition. If you or a loved one has a chronic condition, you know there’s a lot to learn. You need to use health information to help manage conditions like diabetes, heart disease, COPD, and many others.
2. You’re a parent. Once you become a mom or dad, you’ll need to use health information to learn how to care for your child.
3. You can’t get health insurance. Patients with limited health literacy cost more, so insurers pay more. That drives up premiums, which can quickly become unaffordable.
4. You have insurance. If you pay health insurance premiums, the price is based on the cost of caring for a large group of people. The extra costs linked to limited health literacy mean the group’s costs go up. That means you pay more in premiums.
5. You’ll someday die. Every mortal adult should have advance directives. These documents list the treatments you would or wouldn’t want if you got too sick to share your wishes. They also let you name someone to make medical decisions for you if you get too sick to communicate. To understand advance directives, you need to understand some basic health information.
If you’re not in any of these groups, stop reading.
If you do fall into one of these categories, you need to educate yourself on health literacy — and learn how to become more health literate. This blog is a good place to start. We’ll help you learn what you need to know about health literacy.
A version of this article was originally published 2/27/2017.
n estimated 80% of large US employers offer wellness programs for their employees. In fact, wellness programs are often touted as key employee benefits.
But new research questions if wellness programs actually do reduce health care costs. Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association was jointly conducted by Harvard and the University of Chicago.
The researchers randomly offered different wellness programs at various work sites and then tracked the results. Specifically, they offered new wellness programs at randomly selected locations of BJ’s Wholesale Clubs. Those results were compared to existing programs at other locations to identify any changes in individual behavior as well as any changes in the corporate culture.
The results showed some demonstrated behavior changes ... but little effect on other outcomes.
Behavior changes recorded at sites offering Wellness Programs:
Outcomes showing no significant impacts included:
Researchers noted that the field of studying wellness programs is still relatively new. Others have commented that 18 months might not be enough time to effectively measure the success/impact of wellness programs. Might it not take decades?
One of the coauthors of the study, Zirui Song, MD, PhD, assistant professor of health care policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School’s Blavatnik Institute, stated her summary.
As we grow to understand how best to encourage healthy behavior, it may be that workplace wellness programs will play an important role in improving health and lowering the cost of health care. ... For now, however, we should remain cautious about our expectations from such interventions. Rigorous research to measure the effects of such programs can help make sure we’re spending society’s health and wellness dollars in the most effective way.
One missing variable is the role that education plays. Would behavior change absent of an increase in health literacy even be sustainable? Conversely, if employees better understand their personal health — how to properly use an asthma inhaler, for example – would behavior change persist longer?
We’ll be fielding these questions to several health literacy experts so check back for their responses.
A version of this article was originally published 4/19/2019.
e’ve all been there. Sitting in a cold exam room, tense and nervous, perhaps embarrassed in one of those awkward gowns. Not understanding what the doctor is saying — or even knowing what to ask.
Not knowing how to make informed healthcare choices can take a toll — physical, financial, emotional — even professional.
And the numbers don’t lie. Compared to people with higher health literacy, patients with low health literacy have:
In our webinar, “Why Health Literacy Matters to Your Business,” leading experts Cynthia Baur, PhD, Endowed Professor and Director of the University of Maryland’s Horowitz Center for Health Literacy, and Dr. Russell Rothman, MD, MPP, Director of the Center for Health Services Research at Vanderbilt University, discussed with EdLogics moderator and population health expert Fred Goldstein how, by focusing on statistics, we may be missing the bigger picture.
Watch the complete webinar:
Here’s just a small part of what they had to say:
Fred Goldstein: Given all of the statistics, what are some of the key reasons patients with lower health literacy experience poorer health and require more care?
Dr. Baur: One of the things I like people to think about is even the framing of that question. Because you are right about the data that’s been collected on people’s experiences and outcomes with getting healthcare services.
But that approach of looking at people’s health literacy levels and the use of emergency services and what-not — many times, that approach puts the blame on them. Because it makes them seem like they’re doing things that are inappropriate or costing the system or themselves more money.
Dr. Baur: The reality is that we live in a very complex set of health systems. There are multiple healthcare systems.
There’s the public health system. There’s the educational system which influences people’s knowledge and skills about health.
So all of those different systems are part of that larger environment in which people are trying to get information and services. …
Health literacy has really been an issue that’s been out there for a while. The data have been accumulating about these costs.
We’re at a point where people are taking a step back and saying, if you want patient-centered or person-centered health and healthcare, you really have to look at what people’s experiences with these systems are.
You have to look at the challenges they face and the demands being placed on them to try to get information and services. And that will lead us toward looking at organizational practices, system redesign, and ways that will make it easier for people to get what they need.
Dr. Rothman: Poor health literacy is a common problem. We know that over 90 million Americans have basic or below basic skills, and over 110 million have only basic or below basic quantitative skills, which can make it very challenging in our very numbers-focused healthcare environment.
Even people with good health literacy skills can now struggle to navigate what’s become a very complex healthcare system. Trying to figure out how to take their medicines, how to follow a good diet, how to follow up specific recommendations from providers — even just navigating where to go in the hospital, or how to get to appointments, or how to navigate insurance — it’s all become very complex. The amount of time patients have to interact with their doctors or other clinicians whether it’s at a clinic or even in the hospital — it’s very short.
Dr. Rothman: There are real opportunities for us to improve how we provide health information to patients and families to help them to improve their health.
The information and opinions attributed to Drs. Baur and Rothman are their opinions only and do not necessarily represent the views of their affiliated organizations, including the University of Maryland, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
A version of this article was originally published 3/24/2017.
Health insurance plans can seem like they’re written in secret code.
Between trying to decipher mysterious acronyms — like HSAs, FSAs, and HDHPs — and remembering your portal password, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.
"Many of the people we work with feel overwhelmed with the process of choosing the right health insurance plan options," says Scott Spann, a financial planner with Financial Finesse, a provider of workplace financial wellness benefits.. "The majority of Americans are anxious about rising premiums and choosing the right type of coverage." But digging into the details is well worth the effort, he adds.
As high deductible healthcare plans continue to grow in popularity, it’s important to at least take time to understand the basics. Failing to take the time to review your options can be a costly mistake.
Can’t find your decoder ring? This primer can help you get started. EdLogics members can find more in the Glossary of Terms on our Health Insurance learning page.
A version of this article was originally published 6/28/2017.
More and more people are talking about health literacy across the globe.
Experts in medicine, government and public policy are continuing to expand their understanding of the incredible opportunity that increasing health literacy can have in improving health and health outcomes.
Low health literacy means someone has trouble understanding basic healthcare facts, and it often leads to poor health outcomes. These challenges include:
At the recent Health Literacy Conference presented by Wisconsin Literacy in Madison, Wisconsin, luminaries and academics in the area of health literacy met to discuss how to better address the global challenges and costs associated with low health literacy.
In a panel led by the International Health Literacy Association (IHLA), the organization shared its goals and tactics for addressing this global issue.
The International Health Literacy Association (IHLA) is a member-based association for professional development within the health literacy field. IHLA serves a diverse range of stakeholders, medicals, public health professionals, educators, as well as many others engaged in health literacy, research, policy, education and practice.
While research is being conducted across the globe, there is currently little coordination of these efforts or even the sharing of critical data and findings. Not surprisingly, much of this research is carried out within very homogenous populations. This makes the global relevancy of any accumulated data a relatively complex topic.
The IHLA seeks to help in a number of ways:
The IHLA launched with meeting in North America, Asia and Europe. They are currently developing a schedule for upcoming meetings and initiatives.
They are also forming work groups and creating a more formal organizational structure. Visit the International Health Literacy Association for more informaton.
A version of this article was originally published 4/18/2017.
