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Health Literacy
There are many systemic problems to accessing and receiving health care. A legacy of racist, discriminatory practices has led to extreme health inequity. Many of these problems require a systems approach that is beyond the capacity of smaller health care providers. However, everyone can play a part in increasing the health literacy of individuals.
Health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the ability to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others. When we teach this to our young people, we can support them in building critical thinking skills to understand their own health needs, recognize when they need to see a health care provider, advocate for themself, and prevent health complications.
By including a health literacy component in the curriculum, schools and their health partners can increase empowerment, health equity, and well-being outcomes over the course of a child's life. Explore this week’s resources to learn how educators, administrations and school health professionals can help improve the healthy literacy among youth to empower their health choices and decisions now and for years to come
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