Health Literacy Month is an annual worldwide awareness-raising event that has been created in 1999 by Helen Osborne, founder of Health Literacy Consulting. Helen is a health literacy consultant who helps professionals communicate health information in ways that patients and general public can understand.
Health literacy is the ability to read, understand, and have access to healthcare information in order for patients to make the best health decisions. The lack of health communication affects everyone, from patients to health systems and drug companies.
Health Literacy Month happens each year during October, and it’s a time for organizations and individuals to promote the importance of understandable health information. Seeing that the objective of I-Consent is to develop guidelines on how to present Informed Consent for patients, we have decided to take part in the #healthliteracymonth campaign. Informed Consent is the most important document that allows patients to voluntarily decide their participation in research. Therefore, the fundamental part of taking health related decisions is to know, understand, and have access to health information.
If you are a patient willing to attend a clinical trial, a researcher or a clinical trial institute stay tuned on I-Consent Twitter account during the whole month of October! We will post bi-weekly tips about Informed Consent that no doubt will interest you!
Feel free to share and/or retweet our posts with #healthliteracymonth.