Nutrition Commons^™

A Review Of Health Literacy And Its Relationship To Nutrition Education, Heather Diane Gibbs, Karen Chapman-Novakofski

Faculty Scholarship – Family and Consumer Science

Health literacy has emerged as a focus of increasing research in the medical literature, yet it has received little attention in the nutrition literature. Because nutrition practice is an important sector of the health care environment and reduced health literacy confers known health consequences, dietitians should be equipped with an understanding of how health literacy extends to nutritional care. Identification instruments that are available fail to provide an understanding of nutrition literacy. Nutrition literacy may include knowledge of nutrition principles and nutrition skills. Additional research into the development of appropriate nutrition literacy tools and their application is needed.

Nutrition Literacy: Foundations And Development Of An Instrument For Assessment, Heather Diane Gibbs

Faculty Scholarship – Family and Consumer Science

Health literacy has emerged as an area of increasing research focus in the medical literature, yet it has received little attention in the nutrition literature. Registered dietitians (RDs) should be concerned about low health literacy considering its associations with decreased knowledge of disease and management, increased hospitalizations, decreased use of preventive care services, and increased cost of health care. Thus, this research attempts to apply the concept of health literacy into the context of nutrition.

Investigation into whether RDs screen for health literacy and/or adjust teaching methods for different level learners revealed that 79.2% (n=99) of RDs surveyed (n=125) did …