Reintegrate Empowerment and Health Literacy to Advance Public Health and Healthcare Delivery.

Reintegrate Empowerment and Health Literacy to Advance Public Health and Healthcare Delivery. Stud Health Technol Inform. 2020 Jun 25;269:369-399 Authors: Smith SA, Carbone ET Abstract Empowerment has been described as a prerequisite for health and the ultimate goal of health literacy in both clinical practice and health promotion. Improving health literacy and empowerment is central to national and international public health and healthcare policies. While initially merged in the construct of critical health literacy, and currently linked without question in policy and discourse, health literacy and empowerment have been dichotomized - treated as two separate fields of study and practice - and partitioned further into condition-based lines of inquiry. Few studies have addressed both concepts. Indeed, references to empowerment in health literacy studies have decreased over the last decade. This chapter summarizes and interprets the significance of these fault lines for current and future research. Divergent clinical and health promotion perceptions of health empowerment, its expected outcomes, processes, interventions and measures are reviewed. Gaps in the literature are identified and recommendations are suggested to build a more robust science around health literacy and empowerment by addressing those limitations. The chapter reinforces recent calls for increased attention to empowerment in health literacy research and the reintegr...
Source: Studies in Health Technology and Informatics - Category: Information Technology Tags: Stud Health Technol Inform Source Type: research