Health Literacy and Media Preferences with Stroke Survivors

Introduction

Research indicates many adults living in the U.S. do not have all the necessary literacy skills to successfully negotiate and participate in the current health care system. However there is a strong focus on the promotion of this health care system where the client engages pro-actively in the roles of preventative self care and health maintenance. This focus was codified in Healthy People 2010, a set of 10-year national disease prevention and health promotion objectives developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Healthy People has established and monitored progress on benchmarks for the past three decades, which now includes health literacy objectives. Healthy People 2020 continued this tradition of literacy objectives with the launch of its 10-year agenda in December 2010. Health literacy is a major health concern. Engagement in the health care system is not possible for all people when they are unable to read and understand the health care education provided to them. When clients are not able to understand prescriptions, educational handouts or exercise regiments, proactive engagement becomes difficult. Health literacy is a component within the health care system that is recognized as needing assessment in order for people to actively participate.

Description and Analysis

At the same time, health care providers supply education in various formats without regard to the client's level of understanding. Client education is the most common treatment intervention in occupational therapy with 74% of therapists using it often or most of the time. Researchers determined verbal and written media is used extensively by occupational therapists. However much of the printed material is written at a tenth grade level or higher while the average American reads between a sixth and eighth grade level. Low literacy is a serious issue for the older patient population and minimal research has been performed with the health literacy levels of specific diagnoses. This is crucial because increased health risks exist in vulnerable populations who have low health literacy rates. Assessment of the health literacy levels of specific populations who have health related illnesses is important as it can guide the creation of educational materials that are appropriate and therefore positively impact the health of those populations. In 2006, stroke caused the death of 137,199 people; today there are approximately 6.4 million stroke survivors. Stroke survivors are a population set who utilize the health care system as approximately 30% of stroke survivors participate in some type of outpatient therapy after they are discharged from the hospital. This research will look at the health literacy levels and media preferences of stroke survivors who attend an outpatient community based education program (Aldridge 2004, 373).

Types of Media Education

Different types of media can be utilized to educate people who have experienced a stroke. They include videos, printed materials, and use of computers. Videos are used to educate clients about health care issues including interventions and outcomes of procedures. Videos provide a single mode of media in the form of auditory information which ...