Rethinking Health Numeracy: A Multidisciplinary Literature Review
- Affiliations of the authors: Department of Biomedical Informatics (JSA, DK), Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY; New York State Psychiatric Institute (DK), New York, NY
- Correspondence: Jessica S. Ancker, MPH, Department of Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt Clinic Room 534, 622 W. 168th Street, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY 10032; e-mail: <jsa2002{at}columbia.edu>
- Received 2 April 2007
- Accepted 7 August 2007
Abstract
The purpose of this review is to organize various published conceptions of health numeracy and to discuss how health numeracy contributes to the productive use of quantitative information for health. We define health numeracy as the individual-level skills needed to understand and use quantitative health information, including basic computation skills, ability to use information in documents and non-text formats such as graphs, and ability to communicate orally. We also identify two other factors affecting whether a consumer can use quantitative health information: design of documents and other information artifacts, and health-care providers’ communication skills. We draw upon the distributed cognition perspective to argue that essential ingredients for the productive use of quantitative health information include not only health numeracy but also good provider communication skills, as well as documents and devices that are designed to enhance comprehension and cognition.
Footnotes
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Jessica Ancker is supported by Robert Wood Johnson/National Library of Medicine predoctoral training grant 5T15-LM007079-15.
This work was partially supported by the IDEATel project and a cooperative agreement from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (95-C-90998). The authors would like to thank Suzanne Bakken, RN, DNSc, Sara Czaja, PhD, Rita Kukafka, DrPH, MA, and Harold P. Lehmann, MD, PhD, for valuable comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.
