As an assessment of adult literacy skills the ability or lack of ability to read and understand the instructions on a medicine bottle is often checked.
Difficulty in reading and writing can make the difference between recovering from an illness and dying
Prof Tim Shanahan has identified several alarming areas of concerns:
- people with low levels of literacy have higher levels of hospital admittance through emergency departments, are admitted more frequently to hospital and use an inefficient mix of services.
- people who were health literate used 33 per cent fewer health services than those who were not.
- people who were socially isolated and low in literacy were more likely to die than their counterparts
Shanahan was able to study US war veterans and identifies other issues such as emotional instability in low literate teenagers.
His solution ? Increase the level of literacy. As director of reading for Chicago's public schools, he ordered that pupils spend two to three hours a day on literacy and language.
We often see teenagers working 90 minutes daily on Fast ForWord. They have a big gap to bridge and are in a hurry. The intensity and frequency of the literacy shows tremendous gains; we regularly see gains of 2 to 4 years in 4 months work.
You can access the full article in The Irish Times here
