Improving Health Literacy can Improve Health outcomes with Laurie Myers

A person's health literacy can be defined as their ability to access, understand, appraise, and apply health information. A high level of health literacy is positively correlated with better health outcomes. Despite this, nearly half of the American and European population has low health literacy. The health literacy levels of socioeconomically disadvantaged groups are the lowest, suggesting health disparities are partly due to differences in health literacy levels. In order to improve health-related outcomes among socioeconomically disadvantaged people, it is essential to understand what conditions health literacy interventions can be applied under.

In this episode, I speak with Laurie Myers, Director, ESG Strategy and Engagement at Merck, and previously held the position of Director of Global Health Literacy and Oncology Health Equity.

We talk about:

The importance of making medications easy to understand

The impact of low health literacy

Potential barriers to improving health literacy & more!