Health Literacy

During this class Professor Flick spoke about health promotion, health literacy, and prevention. We learned about the three different types of interventions that aim to reduce risks to health which are: primary, secondary, and tertiary. The primary intervention is meant to prevent the disease or injury before it occurs, secondary is to reduce the impact of a disease that has already occurred, and tertiary limits the impact of an ongoing illness that has lasting effects. I thought the most interesting topic we talked about was health literacy. I honestly had never heard about the topic, but it was so interesting to learn about. We learned about how it effects people's ability to use the healthcare system, share personal information, engage in self-care management, and understand risk. We watched a video about a woman that couldn't read very well and the doctor's office gave her a lot of papers to fill out. She did as much as she could and turned it in, only to end up having a hysterectomy that she had no idea she was going to have. There were also several stories about individuals not being able to read the directions on their medicine, so they took (or gave their children) the wrong dosage. I thought it was so interesting and awful that situations like that occur all the time. There is definitely a huge demand for more accessible options for patients to prevent situations like this from happening.