Health literacy.

Health literacy skills are cognitive and social skills which determine the motivation and ability of individuals to gain access to, understand, and use information in ways which promote and maintain good health'. Patients use these literacy skills to critically analyze information; to allow them to exert greater control over life events and situations. An understanding of health literacy is also important for those developing and delivering healthcare programmes, especially vaccination programmes, as both the information and the actions required to use the information are complex requiring sophisticated health literacy skills beyond the capacity of a significant proportion of the population. There are simple steps which can be taken to make the information in vaccination materials easier to understand and use. The complex concepts of reading and numeracy skills in relation to health will be discussed and strategies described which can improve access to healthcare information for all patients, whatever their literacy level.