Making Evidence-Driven Decisions

People who are health literate are better able to:

• Over a third of U.S. adults—77 million people—would have difficulty with common health tasks, such as following directions on a prescription drug label or adhering to a childhood immunization schedule using a standard chart
• Poor health literacy may be a stronger predictor of health than age, income, employment status, education level, and race.
• People with limited health literacy are more likely to skip medical tests and experience more emergency room visits.
• The cost of low health literacy to the U.S. economy may be as high as $600 billion annually.

• Health behaviors developed during adolescence impact the risk for chronic diseases as adults.
• Individuals with adequate or high levels of health literacy enjoy better overall health outcomes than those with limited health literacy.
• Demographic changes among adolescents in the U.S. are predicted to lead to an increase in health disparities and lower health literacy.
• Adolescents generally do not have a high level of health literacy and often face difficulties understanding health information that is presented to them online.
• Adolescents and adults increasingly use the internet to find information about health issues. As many as 70 percent of health-related websites include errors or omissions in their information.