Health Literacy And Advocation Amongst Community Health Workers

Health literacy is an important component of global health maintenance and can be greatly influenced by the DNP. The trigger for the EBP was related to a limited amount of appropriate application of health literacy in South Asian communities and village medical leaders. Health literacy was assessed by distributing short questionnaires to medical professionals such as chemists, doctors, and community health workers. An educational intervention with one specific disease process, hypertension, was then delivered to those who accepted. Upon completion of the teaching, a re-assessment with the same questions was either distributed or reviewed with the participants. Descriptive statistics were used to show the lack of understanding surrounding a common pathology, but also the growth of that understanding through a single teaching. Findings revealed that there was significant lack of understanding and appropriate understanding of hypertension, but a desire to learn and an increase in the understanding was easily attainable through the efforts of a single DNP. Barriers consisted of cultural difficulties such as lack of desire for learning, the prideful assumption they were sufficiently educated and not in need of intervention, language barriers of English versus Hindi, and the business of the clinics or shops that may have prevented full attention to be given to the questionnaires.