Health literacy in contemporary clinical practice (an analytical review)

In response to the global increase in chronic noncommunicable diseases, the World Health Organization and the United Nations have adopted strategies to reduce premature mortality. Improving the health literacy of the population which is defined as a combination of knowledge, motivation and practical skills to maintain health is recognized as a key task for achieving these goals. The basic skills for developing health literacy are understanding, explaining, and changing health-related behaviors. The importance of this issue in disease prevention is highlighted by the fact that a number of countries have already established separate national programs to improve health literacy, and in some countries this topic is included in the national strategy for the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases. There are various models and questionnaires for assessing health literacy, but the lack of a single standardized tool makes this work difficult. At the same time, The Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ) and the European Health Literacy Survey Questionnaire (HLS-EU-Q) are considered the most thoughtful due to the assessment of conceptually different areas of health literacy among the subjects. Research shows that the literacy rate is related to socio-demographic factors: it is lower among the elderly, people with low incomes and education levels. It has been demonstrated that patients with a lower level of health literacy are less aware of diseases, do not participate in public life, and have a prognostically unfavorable pattern of behavior, i. e. sedentary lifestyle and poor nutrition. Special attention is paid to the development of digital health literacy, as it moderately correlates with maintaining a healthy lifestyle, as well as medical literacy in matters of immunoprophylaxis.