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Health literacy in public health

The concept of health literacy is rapidly gaining importance in public health circles and has expanded in recent years to encompass information seeking, decision-making, problem solving and critical thinking applied to disease prevention and health promotion. 

This on-going collection of manuscripts from Archives of Public Health, brings together empirical research on the health literacy with a specific focus on measurement of health literacy in community settings or at population level, links between health literacy, healthy lifestyle, health outcomes and health service use; role of health literacy in explaining socio-economic disparities in health; interventions to advance health literacy or to facilitate access of services to persons with low levels of health literacy.

This collection of articles has not been sponsored and articles have undergone the journal's standard peer-review process. The Guest Editors declare no competing interests.

  1. Health literacy is widely considered as a key determinant of health and a priority in the public health policy agenda. Low health literacy has been associated with poorer health states, broader inequalities an...

    Authors: Athanassios Vozikis, Kyriakos Drivas and Kostantinos Milioris
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2014 72:15
  2. Although literacy is increasingly considered to play a role in socioeconomic inequalities in health, its contribution to the explanation of educational differences in health has remained unexplored. The aim of...

    Authors: Mirjam P Fransen, Gillian Rowlands, Karlijn EF Leenaars and Marie-Louise Essink-Bot
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2014 72:14
  3. Text4baby provides educational text messages to pregnant and postpartum women and targets underserved women. The primary purpose of this study is to examine the health behaviors and cell phone usage patterns o...

    Authors: Elisabeth Poorman, Julie Gazmararian, Lisa Elon and Ruth Parker
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2014 72:13
  4. Health literacy has been recognized as an important factor influencing health behaviors and health outcomes. However, its definition is still evolving, and the tools available for its measurement are limited i...

    Authors: Ana Maria Moreno Londoño and Peter J Schulz
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2014 72:12
  5. The problem of overweight and obesity in children and adolescents is considered an epidemic in both developed and developing world by the WHO. There has been little study on the relationship between health lit...

    Authors: Lawrence T Lam and Li Yang
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2014 72:11