Health Literacy

This week's topic was about health literacy. I found this to be very appealing since I could relate to it. English is my second language and I had a very difficult time transitioning when moved to the United States. I faced many of the problems people in the video were experiencing and always thought if only my English becomes better, I would never face the challenge of comprehending others such as doctors, dentists, and others who tend to use very complex language. Well, as the years passed by and my English was improving, I still found myself having a hard time understanding certain things. Being a graduate students, there are still some things I don't understand so I guess I must agree with the statement that literacy and intelligence are not the same thing (haha). I might have knowledge of some things and still not be able to understand the complexity of the language used.

After watching this video in class, I'm worried about my parents and how they're suppose to comprehend all this complex language in everyday life such as doctor's visits’, medication, insurance information etc. In my opinion, life would be much easier for everyone if people were using plain language to get their message across. In addition, life would be especially easier for me since I have to invest a lot of my time interpreting (of course to the best of my ability) the complex writing of medical insurance, medications, car insurance, etc for my parents.