The Washington Post featured an article about health literacy in the United States on Feb. 28, 2011. Dr. Bonnie Braun, the endowed chair and director at the Herschel S. Horowitz Center for Health Literacy at the UMD SPH provided her comments on the Post's article.
"As this article explains, health literacy is a vital set of knowledge and skills. Health literacy paves the way to positive health outcomes. It’s so important that all health professionals, not just those in the medical field, possess and use health literacy competencies in their professional practice settings.
"The Herschel S. Horowitz Center for Health Literacy is the nation’s first academic-based endowed health literacy center. We are addressing health literacy through education of students and current public health workers. We are conducting research and promoting the incorporation of health literacy science in education, public policy and the practice of all health professionals. We are currently launching Health Literacy Maryland, an initiative to collaboratively address barriers described in this article. We welcome others who want to join us.
"Thank you for writing this article. It laid a good foundation for the case of improving health literacy. We’d like to see a series of stories in the Post explaining how area hospitals, health centers, clinics, including dental and mental, health departments, nutrition educators and others are working to eliminate health literacy barriers among urban and rural populations."
Read the article on The Post's website here.
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