Numeracy and The Affordable Care Act

Submitted by Brooke Istas on Tue, 04/15/2014 - 09:14
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Hello All!

My colleague and fellow SME, Julie McKinney, posted this interesting post last week:

Hi Everyone,

I want to let you know about a paper that was commissioned by the Institute of Medicine's health Literacy Roundtable:

Numeracy and The Affordable Care Act: Opportunities and Challenges

http://www.iom.edu/~/media/Files/Activity%20Files/PublicHealth/HealthLiteracy/Commissioned-Papers/Numeracy-and-the-Affordable-Care-Act-Opportunities-and-Challenges.pdf 

This commissioned paper addresses three questions: 
1. What research shows about people’s numeracy skill levels, 
2. What kinds of numeracy skills are needed to select a health plan, choose treatments, 
and understand medication instructions, and 
3. How can providers communicate with those with low numeracy skills? 

This paper may be enlightening for those who are helping students to improve their numeracy skills. It goes into detail about the kinds of numeracy skills are needed for taking care of one's health. The life skills needed to take care of our health now include dealing with health insurance: enrolling in it, navigating it, and using it to get the full benefits.

I thought perhaps this information would be interesting since we are the ones helping students improve their numeracy skills, THOUGHTS?  Let me know!

Brooke