Clear health communication is a critical component of the health care delivery system. It affects the continuum of care from prevention and screening to history taking to explaining a diagnosis and treatment.
Millions of adult Americans – 90 million – have trouble understanding health information. This is known as low health literacy, and its scope and impact has serious consequences for individual patient outcomes and the health care system as a whole. The issue of health literacy is also fundamental to efforts to reduce health disparities. Clear health communication techniques can help public health professionals reduce health disparities by ensuring that health information is delivered in easy-to-understand, actionable and culturally relevant terms.
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