Health Literacy

Health Literacy is the ability and capacity of a person to understand and decipher medical and healthcare terms, services and health information and incorporate it to manage their own health and of their near and dear ones is known as health literacy. A very small percentage of adults have health literacy.

Thanks to the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), Social media and tech savvy and informed individuals who share and spread vast health information and contribute towards health literacy. This health information and health data scattered across media, is brought forward time to time, through Crowdsourcing on social media sites as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, Instagram by content sharing through posts, videos,, white papers, slide shares and Health infographics.

There are six components as identified by researchers:

1. Traditional literacy and numeracy
2. Computer literacy
3. Information literacy
4. Health literacy
5. Media literacy
6. Science literacy.

All abve mentioned factors influence health literacy and e-health literacy altogether. People need to be equipped with knowledge and skills through traditional ways of acquiring knowledge and through media and internet, they need to be computer literate and to assimilate knowledge and communicate with others. This can also be achieved by less literate people through use of media ,mobile technology and peer group learning where they help each other to understand and use knowledge and technology and gain knowledge.

Address these issues in your own ways and create a healthy and literate society where everybody is well informed about the services, procedures and information and can manage health of their own as well as their kith and kins.