Course Summary:
Health literacy is recognised as being a key health
determinant that focuses on an individual’s ability to understand, function,
and negotiate health issues and systems. An individual’s health literacy level can
range from low to high, and low health literacy is known to contribute to
significantly worse self-management of health and poorer health outcomes. This
is important, as surveys show that the majority of New Zealanders are limited in being able to manage those tasks and skills that
are associated with health literacy.
Pharmacists are in a key position to help
patients improve their knowledge and skills around health and medicines therapy
thereby improving patient outcomes.