Health Literacy

White Bear Group is committed to improving the health literacy of our clients and their employees. By helping each client develop and deliver multi-level educational interventions according to our IEEC model, WBG provides a way to address two of the most significant factors impacting today's spiraling healthcare costs - health literacy and personal financial literacy issues.

The American Medical Association defines health literacy as "the ability to read, understand and use health information to make appropriate health care decisions and follow instructions for treatment." The fact that tens of millions of Americans lack this basic ability has numerous negative implications for the cost and quality of health care.

Across a wide spectrum of diseases, patients with low health literacy have greater difficulty managing chronic conditions. Among patients with type 2 diabetes, for example, low health literacy is associated with poorer control of blood sugar and higher risk of stroke. Patients with marginal health literacy are also less likely to seek out routine and preventive services. For instance, they are 40 percent more likely to never receive a flu shot.3 Low health literacy is associated with poorer adherence to drug warning labels, leading to increased safety risks.4 Most Americans also face serious challenges interpreting basic information required to choose a health plan and understand their health benefits. As a result, increasing attention has been devoted to the problem of health benefits literacy.

Though touching all segments of the population, rates of inadequate health literacy are nearly twice as high among African Americans (75 percent) and Hispanics (73 percent) as Whites (38 percent). Age is also a factor - approximately 81 percent of adults age 65 and over have inadequate health literacy.5***

***http://www.aetna.com/about/aoti/aetna_perspective/health_literacy.html