Health literacy entails a person’s ability to seek, know, and use health information. To achieve effective health literacy, the four levels of health literacy must be attained, namely functional health literacy, interactive health literacy, critical health literacy, and holistic health literacy ( Nutbeam, 2015). A society that understands all the four levels is health literate and has an effective quality of life. Health practitioners while undergoing their training must undergo thorough training that is indeed time-consuming to attain relevant skills to uphold quality health and promote health literacy in the society.
Functional Health Literacy (FHL) is the extent to which persons can attain process and know simple health information and services required to do best health decisions ( Nutbeam, 2015). Poor competency FHL has a huge negative effect on an individual and society as a whole. Where the health practitioners are inadequately trained, they cannot educate their patients appropriately making them have a low capability to control their health and disease procedure, low adherence to measures of health intervention and disease deterrence and the usage and adherence to prescribed medicine. Therefore, effective health practitioners should have access to quality training to help them promote literacy among teens and adults, as this remains a major challenge today globally ( Nutbeam, 2015). The next health literacy is the interactive health literacy. During the training of health practitioners, this encompasses an attempt to help the learner to attain skills to assist patients in self-help and grasping of opportunities to enhance personal skills. The main focus here is persons, their outlooks and awareness. It involves the capability to retrieve info from different sources and analyze it to get meaning and apply it appropriately and network with more confidence with professionals.
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Critical health literacy, on the other hand, encompasses most enhanced cognitive skills which with incorporation with social skills, can be used critically to evaluate info, and employ such info to manage life occurrences and circumstances ( Nutbeam, 2015). The fourth level is holistic health literacy entailing various dimensions namely tolerance, acknowledging culture as a large and multidimensional occurrence, environmental awareness, and analysis of the position of the globe from a diverse worldview ( Nutbeam, 2015). Exploring and understanding this can be very time consuming for learners. Health literacy has numerous benefits. To start with, it is crucial for successful access to care and usage of services, personal-care of chronic illnesses and promoting quality of life. It is also essential to healthcare that needs persons to have a participative role in the decision-making process ( Nutbeam, 2015). What is more, help the student to prepare for their career life.
Health education can improve students' levels of health significantly by improving self-efficacy and connect health habits to academic successes ( Nutbeam, 2015). Self-efficacy involves the capability to analyze information gain knowledge and become confident in response to health communication. Moreover, health literacy assists students to understand their health and more so that of their clients ( Nutbeam, 2015). This assists them to grow into productive citizens in society. It further helps the learners develop more autonomy in the decision-making process and enablement. It further assists the student to develop a positive view about life and pursue career goals.
Health education is linked to broader school goals through its curriculum and approaches used in imparting necessary knowledge to the learners ( Nutbeam, 2015). Moreover, it links with other school subjects such as visual literacy, computer literacy, and numerical literacy. The different subjects help the student advance their skills crucial in delivering quality services to the patient and even interacting with their colleagues in the work realm.
In conclusion, the categorization of health literacy shows that different groups of health literacy continuously enable higher independence in decision making and individual growth; transition between groups is not only reliant on cognitive growth but also acquaintance to diverse types of information; and lastly, it relies on person's confidence to react to health communication. Health literacy defines the cognitive and societal skills which define the motivation and capability of persons to attain access to, recognize and employ information in means which support and sustain health.
References
Nutbeam, D. (2015). Defining, measuring and improving health literacy. Review Articles , 42 (4), 450-456.
