The role of health literacy in empowering patients

Abstract

Health literacy is an essential ingredient of the recipe for effective patient empowerment. This chapter suggests that health literacy should be dealt with as a dynamic and multifaceted concept, which consists of two shades. On the one hand, individual health literacy concerns the personal ability to navigate the healthcare service system and to properly function within it; this ability relies on the set of individual functional, interactive and critical health-related skills. On the other hand, organizational health literacy involves healthcare organizations’ ability to establish a friendly and co-creating partnership with the patients, in order to actively engage them in the provision of care. Both individual and organizational health literacy are needed to foster the success of patient empowerment initiatives.