Health literacy and its outcomes: Application and extension of elaboration likelihood model

Approximately 90 million adults in the USA have difficulty understanding and using health information. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services included improved consumer health literacy as one of the top priorities and identified health literacy as an important component of health communication. According to the American Medical Association, poor health literacy is a stronger predictor of a person's health than age, income, employment status, education level and race. It also has been found to be associated with limited knowledge of healthcare issues which may contribute to poor personal healthcare management. Public policy and advocacy organizations have expressed concern as well as studies examining the concept of health literacy with instruments to measure individual level of health literacy. In this study, we review current development of health literacy, its measures and effects on information processing of direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising. Applying Elaboration Likelihood Model, we further develop a conceptual framework and postulate health outcomes depending on the routes of information processing.