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Health Literacy

URL of this page: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/healthliteracy.html

Health literacy is the ability to understand health information and to use that information to make good decisions about your health and medical care. Health information can overwhelm even people with advanced literacy skills. About one third of the adult population in the United States has limited health literacy.

Limited health literacy can affect your ability to

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

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Date last updated: September 29 2008
Topic last reviewed: July 20 2008