Nothing is more important than YOUR Health!
Our Vision
This website is developed and published exclusively to encourage and to motivate you to increase your health literacy and your ability to navigate the YOUR personal healthcare system. Through extensive research, it is been determined that health literacy improves
healthcare outcomes, patient satisfaction and lowers healthcare costs. Unfortunately, a small minority of individuals within the United States are functionally literate in regards to the healthcare industry, even their personal local healthcare system. Despite national and international recommendations from the CDC and World Health Organization in the early 21st century, few US school districts or universities have included, much less required, curriculum designed to address and to improve the health literacy of its graduating students. However, more than 30 other countries have implemented these recommendations. Few parents teach their children the many important principles of health and healthcare literacy. Fewer than 20% of US individual have achieved “functional health literacy.”
Our effort is guide you to be better able to understand, to communicate with, to research and to navigate US healthcare, particularly those elements that affect YOU and YOUR personal healthcare decisions.
Our additional goal is to encourage the recognition of and adoption of “Health and Healthcare Literacy” into the various schools and university curriculum as part of its economic and personal finance offerings. Also to encourage parents to improve their health literacy and teach it to their children. Healthcare will be used by everyone and it is almost 20% of the US annual GDP.
Health literacy
Health literacy is the degree to which an individual has the capacity to obtain, communicate, process and understand basic health information and services to make appropriate healthcare decisions. To be “functionally health literate”, one needs the skills:
1. to find, appropriately utilize, understand and pay for information and services
2. to communicate your needs and preferences and respond to the information and services
3. to process the meaning and usefulness of the information and services
4. to understand the choices, consequences and context of the information and services
5. to decide which information and services match your needs and preferences.
6. to be able to effectively self-advocate with their personal healthcare system
7. to get the best outcomes and be completely satisfied with their healthcare services
We hope this website will be only the beginning of your journey of self-education to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to understand, successfully communicate with and properly utilize YOUR personal healthcare providers and their services.
Fredric B Garner MD, FAAP
Gary Kreps, PhD George Mason University
Distinguished University Professor,
Director Center for Health & Risk Communication