Welcome to our blog!
Hi everyone! In our blog, we discuss the importance of illiteracy in regards to health, also known as health literacy. Low health literacy is a problem that does not get the attention it deserves. Even in developed parts of the world, such as Europe, more people than you might expect have issues with this skill. But before we dive into the different aspects of this problem, a little explanation on what health literacy actually is, might be helpful.
What is health literacy?
Health literacy can be defined not only as understanding health information, but also as using it in order to make health decisions. We believe that health information plays an important role in people’s ability to live a long and healthy life. People not understanding such information is still a large issue within our society. However, there isn’t a lot of awareness considering this topic. The consequences of having a health illiterate society are catastrophic. Limited health literacy prevents people from getting the treatment they need.
About the authors
We are second-year students in the Bachelor ‘European Studies’ at Maastricht University. We are all interested in health literacy and by writing a blog we can put our ideas together and raise awareness. We will all be focussing on a different area of this topic.
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‘Hi everyone! I am Florine and I will be guiding you through my blog post about children’s mental health illiteracy. In my blog, I want to show you how crucial it is, especially in these uncertain times, to improve children’s mental health literacy and how we can all contribute to it. ‘
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‘Hi! My name is Judith and my posts will focus on taking health literacy into account when creating policies. Connecting this to the pandemic, I will discuss in the first post a possible way of how this can be done and in my second post what impact this can have on, for instance, the vaccination rates.’
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‘Hello everyone! My name is Marie and in my blog, I discuss the relationship between health care systems and health literacy. It focuses on how one’s health literacy level can differ from one country to another as a consequence of how health care systems are constructed.’
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‘Hey everybody! My name is Jasper and on this blog, I will talk about low literacy and cardiovascular disease, specifically how they relate to each other in terms of risk profiles, and how to inform low literate patients.‘
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‘Hello readers, hope you are having an excellent day so far. My name is Leo and I shall be focusing on the challenges presented by Illiteracy when it comes to making effective health decisions. Let me know your thoughts on my blog pages
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So, feel free to take a look at our pages! Hopefully, our blog will give you a better insight into the issue of health literacy and raise awareness about the importance of the problem. If you have any questions, comments, or simply want to contribute to our discussion, feel free to leave a comment in our comment section 😀