A quicksand called health literacy

摘要

The concept of health literacy comes from the illuministic idea that disease development is merely due to ignorance about its determinants and, consequently, to involuntary risk exposure. This idea gave rise to many educational programs focused on improving medical knowledge, that is, health literacy, which is expected to produce behavioral changes in terms of primary (i.e., lifestyle) and secondary (i.e., screening) prevention. Knowledge improvement is assumed to automatically improve awareness, which results in prevention-oriented behaviors.