Health literacy

This branch covers people's capacity to obtain, understand, and act on health information, divided by what a writer needs to understand and plan: the concept, the extent and consequences of limited health literacy, how readers with limited skills read, interventions beyond wording, and the path a message takes to its reader. Wording techniques, guides and training, readability and reader testing, layout, and particular patient documents belong to their own branches.

• What health literacy is — a capacity rather than a reading score, why it falls when the reader is ill or stressed, its reach into numbers, design, devices and social resources, and its functional, interactive and critical levels
• The size and cost of the health literacy shortfall — how many readers fall short in the United States and Europe, and what the shortfall costs in health, money and adherence
• How a reader with limited skills reads — short-term memory, pace and reading habits, and joining new information to existing knowledge
• Why plain language is not enough on its own — the limits of clearer wording, barriers and interventions, shared responsibility, and the medical writer’s part
• Planning a health message through sender, message, medium and receiver — a four-part model and its limits, the senders, checking the message for accuracy before appropriateness, choosing the medium, starting from the receiver, and reinforcing spoken instructions