Why Conduct a Pharmacy Health Literacy Assessment?
Health literacy is an important factor in an individual’s ability to perform various health-related tasks. These include filling a prescription and taking medications correctly, reading and being able to act on information from a disease prevention brochure, filling out forms, and making decisions about health insurance. In its 2001 report Crossing the Quality Chasm and its 2004 report Health Literacy: A Prescription to End Confusion, the Institute of Medicine indicated that health care providers must redesign the system of health care delivery in order to meet the needs of low-literate individuals.2,3 Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy indicate that many Americans have difficulty understanding and acting upon health information.4 • 14 percent of adults (30 million people) have below basic health literacy—meaning that they are either non-literate in English or can perform no more than the most simple and concrete health literacy tasks, such as circling the date
