Health Literacy as a Tool to Ease Pressure on Long-Term Care Systems: Perspectives and Issues on Healthy Aging Across the Life Course

Abstract

This paper aims to heighten attention and awareness surrounding the need for collective actions to advance health literacy interventions and initiatives within a life-course framework. Placing health literacy within a life course approach is held to be a precursor to healthy aging and an effective means of a) increasing healthy life expectancy in later life and b) reducing escalating costs associated with the operation of long-term care systems established to provide long-term care for the aged. Governments worldwide and their respective public health systems are encouraged to initiate policy developments that promote health literacy as a national health imperative. The significant actual and potential contributions of a strengthened focus on health literacy are highlighted as offering a pathway for a cultural shift leading to patient and consumer empowerment, increased health care equity, and improvements in organizational and health system outcomes. Making health literacy an essential part of health care policies warrants an understanding of the complex and dynamic interplay of components operating at the individual, community, and health system levels.