Adult literacy advocate Toni Cordell recounts the story of feeling comforted when her doctor told her that her medical concern could be solved with an easy surgery. She agreed to proceed without asking further questions and didn’t understand the medical consent forms because she didn’t read well. At a follow-up office visit a couple of weeks after the procedure, Cordell was shocked when the nurse asked, “How are you feeling since your hysterectomy?” Cordell thought to herself, “How could I be so stupid as to allow somebody to take part of my body, and I didn’t know it?” She admits that although she graduated from high school, she only had a fifth-grade reading level, which she had always tried to hide from others.

Cordell’s story is unfortunately all too common, and it reflects the widespread and well-known problem of limited health literacy. Other examples of health literacy difficulties include incorrect use of medicines, filling out medical forms incompletely, failure to carry out health care instructions, and making unhealthy lifestyle choices like smoking, poor diet, and lack of exercise. Let's review some of the basic facts around this issue and how to address it to achieve better long-term health.

Health literacy is defined as obtaining, processing, understanding, and communicating health-related information to make informed health decisions (World Health Organization, 2025). It is related to overall academic ability, but even very intelligent, well-educated persons can have significant difficulties understanding health........

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