OBJECTIVE To assess the relationship between health literacy and compliance, disease awareness, and disease progression in patients with glaucoma. METHODS A cross-sectional observational study of 204 English-speaking patients treated for glaucoma for at least 1 year at Kresge Eye Institute was conducted. Health literacy was assessed using the standardized Test of Functional Health Literacy in...

BACKGROUND Health literacy is an important determinant of health, but national health literacy levels are known for only some European countries. This study aims to examine to what extent national health literacy levels can be estimated based on publicly available census data. METHOD Multivariate models were used to predict two types of health literacy on population level. Predictors were sel...

BACKGROUND Indigenous Australians suffer substantially poorer oral health than their non-Indigenous counterparts and new approaches are needed to address these disparities. Previous work in Port Augusta, South Australia, a regional town with a large Indigenous community, revealed associations between low oral health literacy scores and self-reported oral health outcomes. This study aims to dete...

Low literacy remains a problem across the developed world. Health literacy has emerged as a specialist literacy, although its conceptualisation and measurement overlap with those of functional literacy. The social practice view, which conceptualises literacy as an activity rather than a skill, is useful in examining literacy-related practices and demands in healthcare contexts. Associations bet...

information and services to make appropriate health decisions—is essential to promote healthy people and communities. Health care institutions and public health systems play a critical role in health literacy, because they can make it easier or more difficult for people to find and use health information and services. For the first time, there are national data that demonstrate currently availa...

Information literacy education is described by the authors of this special issue of Italics as fully embedded in the process of independent and lifelong learning practices. Full integration of information literacy is advocated at various levels of education, through the adoption of real-world assessment strategies, and through a critical pedagogy. These are necessary steps towards the developme...

Literacy and health research and prac­ tice in Canada date back to the late 1980s when the Ontario Public Health Association (OPHA) collaborated with Frontier College, the country’s oldest literacy network, on a literacy and health project. Their first report, Making the World Healthier and Safer for People Who Can’t Read, was published in 1989.1 Their second report, Partners in Practice, docu­...

Introduction. Theoretical approaches and frameworks that help us to understand the contemporary notion of information and communication technology literacy (ICT literacy) in the formal education sector are reviewed and examined. Method. The analysis is conducted from a technology (i.e., computer science) conceptual perspective. The focus is on those aspects of new literacies that are directly r...