La littératie en santé : destinée à l’amélioration de la santé ?

Abstract

Health literacy is a major public health issue. It directly influences the health-related decisions that individuals make. Improved health literacy is also directly correlated with better health. On the basis of this correlation, health literacy has ostensibly taken on the function of improving and maintaining good health. However, there is no evidence that health literacy, and hence the decisions it generates, are aimed at improving health. The aim of our study is to describe, using data collected via the Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ), the framework underpinning the health literacy in those surveyed. This allows us to verify whether or not this framework is aligned with the objective of promoting or maintaining health. Health literacy is not governed by the objective of improving health. Health literacy is not necessarily cultivated in a bid to improve personal health. Health-related decision-making (as a product of health literacy) is governed, at least in part, by other forces than that of the desire to improve health. We need to move beyond the model that reduces health literacy, and therefore health decision-making, to a purely rational and individual process aimed exclusively at promoting or maintaining personal health.