The definition of health literacy was updated in August 2020 with the release of the U.S. government's Healthy People 2030 initiative. The update addresses personal health literacy and organizational health literacy and provides the following definitions:
- Personal health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the ability to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others.
- Organizational health literacy is the degree to which organizations equitably enable individuals to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others.
The new definitions:
- Emphasize people's ability to use health information rather than just understand it
- Focus on the ability to make “well-informed" decisions rather than “appropriate" ones
- Incorporate a public health perspective
- Acknowledge that organizations have a responsibility to address health literacy
Excerpted from:
https://www.cdc.gov/healthliteracy/learn/index.html#wnd
