Tag Archives: health literacy
Dental health literacy: the importance of clear and actionable information called the Partners in Prevention
There is increasing recognition that to improve health outcomes, health literacy must increase. Patients need to know the cause and effect of their condition and what to do to get better and stay better. Most importantly, the level of health literacy is associated with the likelihood of receiving preventive care.1 Health literacy is the “patient’s capacity to obtain, communicate, process and understand basic health information and services to make appropriate health decisions.”2 The only survey of American health literacy found 12% of adults were proficient, a third were “basic” or “below basic” literacy levels and about half were at an intermediate level, meaning that they … Continue reading
Getting Patients to Take Charge of Their Health
In her blog titled “Getting Patients to Take Charge of Their Health”, Dr. Pauline Chen, M.D. talks about how to engage adult patients to take better care of their chronic diseases. Her message applies to dental care as the population ages and has a growing burden of dental disease. Dr. Chen says that it is easy and customary to blame the patient for being sick. But she also points to some novel research on patient engagement conducted at a network of 40 family medical clinics in Minneapolis called Fairview Health Services. For almost two years, Fairview Health Services has been giving patients a survey to … Continue reading
Health Seeking Activity is a Major Factor on Health Care Purchasing
The Center for Studying Health System Change in Washington, DC recently reported that 50% of American adults seek information about a personal health concern from a source other than their doctor. And nearly two in five American adults reported seeking health information on behalf of another person in the previous 12 months. Health seeking activity seems to have declined modestly since the recession and in tandem with the decline in print media. However, ten years ago only 38% of American adults reported any health seeking activity. The Center found that more information is sought on the Internet and less from print media. Those most actively … Continue reading
Dentistry in a Decade
In a short article in the December 2011 issue of Dental Update, two dental students in the U.K. have prognosticated about their new profession. They identify some major trends over the next ten years in delivering dental care to an aging U.K. population.1 The restorations in many older patients will need replacement. There will be a shift, subsequently, to maintaining new restorations until end of life. An increasingly acidic diet (attributed to austerity and the price of food) will increase caries increment and caries prevalence. These trends will surely raise interest in more preventive care by both the adult patients, and under capitated reimbursement, by … Continue reading
Health Risk Assessments
The concept of risk assessment in managing chronic diseases has been around for many years. For example, it was first introduced by Canadian employers in the 1980s as a way of changing the behaviour of employees. The early experience of health risk assessment was often disappointing. Without financial incentives and clear alternatives to treatment, behaviour of the patient, and often the provider, rarely changed sufficiently to make a difference. Unless the patient can see a direct self-interest, an affordable alternative to treatment and/or a financial gain to change, old habits eventually resume. So why bother doing a short risk assessment of your adult patients for … Continue reading
Why She Buys
I am frequently struck by how rarely the older woman is portrayed in the media, particularly when it comes to personal services like dental care. In family dentistry, the all-too-common imagery involves children. For example, posters in bus shelter or flyers in the mail from dental offices use a young family or just as often, young kids on a swing. This approach ignores the fundamentals of demographics and income distribution in North American and European economies. The reality is that older women are now more numerous in many communities than children, have far more funding available for dental services, and generally are more in need … Continue reading
What do your patients know about their oral health? (or is that, what do they want to know?)
A recent report from the U.S. Institute of Medicine said that nearly half of Americans lack health literacy – they simply can’t obtain nor process and retain information about their own health. I find this surprising. Our research conducted on patients’ awareness of preventive dental care found that more than half knew the bacterial origins of tooth decay, and also knew that good oral health was linked to good overall health. Yet, our surveys also find that this knowledge was garnered primarily by the patient through his/her own research, rather than from their dental professional. Indeed, one overriding comment by survey participants is that there … Continue reading