Health Literacy in the Information Age: Communicating Cancer Information to Patients and Families

In this issue of CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, authors Terry C. Davis et al. address the crucial topic of health literacy with regard to cancer communication. They describe the barriers that can keep people from understanding the information they receive—barriers referred to collectively as a lack of health literacy.The US Department of Health and Human Services defines health literacy as “the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.” Nearly half of the adult population in the United States has low or limited literacy skills. The authors indicate that people with low literacy skills come from a variety of backgrounds: they may be native-born or immigrants and they come from all races and classes. They tend to have more health problems, live in poverty, have fewer years of education, and are older. Low literacy adversely impacts cancer incidence, mortality, and quality of life: • Cancer screening information may be ineffective; as a result, patients may be diagnosed at a later stage. • Treatment options may not be fully understood; therefore some patients may not receive treatments that best meet their individual needs. • Informed consent documents may be too complex for many patients and consequently, patients may make suboptimal decisions about accepting or rejecting interventions. The authors explore these and other implications of low health literacy and offer recommendations for improving written and oral communication.They observe that it is easier to change the communication skills of the health care provider than those of the patient. In other words, it is incumbent upon the information provider to make the information as understandable as possible.