Mar 16 Andrew Pleasant to present "Health Literacy as a Powerful Tool to Prevent Chronic Disease"

We are delighted that Andrew Pleasant will be presenting his work on Monday, March 16th from noon to 1 pm at the Gordon and Leslie Diamond Health Care Centre in Room 9299.

Please RSVP for this event

As a field of research, a viable approach to improving health outcomes, and an important area of policy, health literacy has experienced significant growth and considerable evolution since its broad introduction in the 1990s. Despite that history, far too many practitioners, researchers, and policymakers focusing on clinical medicine, health systems, public health, and health policy remain unaware and unaffected by the best practices of health literacy. While the inherent promise of health literacy is improved health and well-being, the bulk of research has focused on identifying the negative effects of a lack of health literacy. This strategy is a hindrance to further identifying the utility and increasing the uptake of lessons learned about health literacy in government, business, health care systems, and society. The field needs to reverse direction away from that deficit model of health literacy and focus collective efforts on a positive model of how health literacy can and should be prioritized and utilized to improve health at lower costs. Practical examples drawn from the ongoing community-based interventions conducted by Canyon Ranch Institute will be used to illustrate this potential and the power of health literacy to prevent and reduce the burden of chronic disease. This shift from framing health literacy as a problem to proving the viability and strength of health literacy as a solution will present to policymakers a clear choice to either adopt and promote the best practices of health literacy or suffer the consequences of being the leader who ignored a proven, viable solution to the currently unsustainable health care expenditures and ever-increasing burden of preventable disease, disability, and early death.

More information can be found at:

http://www.canyonranchinstitute.org/about-cri/leadership/team/andrew-ple...