Key points
- Health literacy is the ability to find, understand and use health information — in everyday life, not only in a clinic.
- It has two sides: personal health literacy (what a reader can do) and organisational health literacy (how clearly services explain things).
- WHO's health literacy fact sheet was reissued on 22 December 2025, naming digital and commercial determinants as new determinants of health literacy.
- Misinformation, disinformation and malinformation are three different problems — and they need three different responses.
Direct answer: Health literacy is the ability to find, understand and use health information — in everyday life, not only in a clinic. It decides whether a person can read a label, follow a form, judge a claim online, or ask the right question at the right time. This article is about health literacy where it actually happens: at home, on a phone, in a waiting room. It is not a definition page — the authorities already publish definitions. It is a guide to the everyday-life angle, which nobody had published before this page.
Health literacy in everyday life
Most health information is met outside healthcare: a headline shared by a relative, a video about a new treatment, a form at a pharmacy, a school letter about vaccinations, a bill with a number that does not make sense. Health literacy is what happens in those moments. It is finding the information, understanding it, and using it — three separate steps, and a person can be good at one and stuck on another.
The stakes are practical. A reader who cannot find the official schedule cannot check whether a claim about it is true. A reader who cannot understand a form cannot complete it. A reader who cannot use information cannot act on it. None of that is about intelligence; it is about whether the information, and the reader’s skills, meet in the middle.
Personal and organisational health literacy
Health literacy has two sides, and only one of them belongs to the reader. Personal health literacy is what a reader can do: find information, understand it, and use it to make decisions. Organisational health literacy is how clearly services explain things: plain language, clear signage, forms people can follow, staff who check understanding rather than assuming it.
The second side is the one services control, and it is where most of the fixable problems sit. A leaflet written at university level, a form that assumes a term nobody defined, a website that hides the answer three clicks deep — those are organisational failures, not reader failures. Good services design for the reader they have, not the reader they wish they had.
Digital health literacy
More health information is now found online than anywhere else, and the online environment is the hardest to judge: official sources sit next to rumour, advertising and entertainment, all in the same format, all equally confident. Digital health literacy is finding and judging health information online — telling a WHO fact sheet from a sponsored post, a study from a press release about a study, and a personal story from evidence about a population.
WHO’s health literacy fact sheet, reissued on 22 December 2025, names digital and commercial determinants as new determinants of health literacy: the design of platforms, and the commercial interests behind the information, now shape what people can find and believe. That is a recent change, and it is why this guide treats the online environment as the main setting rather than an afterthought.
Misinformation, disinformation, malinformation
Three words that are often used as one, and should not be. Misinformation is false information shared without intent to mislead — someone passing on something they believe. Disinformation is false information shared deliberately to mislead — someone who knows it is false and shares it anyway. Malinformation is true information shared to cause harm — a genuine figure taken out of context, a real quote cut to reverse its meaning, a true side effect reported as if it were the whole story.
The distinction matters because the response differs. Misinformation is corrected with better information. Disinformation is a matter for the platform and the publisher. Malinformation is the hardest of the three, because the facts check out and only the framing is wrong — and framing is exactly what a tired reader has least time to inspect.
Check before you share
A short checklist, for any health claim met online:
- Check the source. Who published it, and what do they gain if you believe it? An official source — WHO, CDC, a national health authority — is checkable; an anonymous account is not.
- Check the date. Health information goes stale. A 2023 fact sheet does not describe 2026, and a figure without a year cannot be trusted.
- Check whether an official source says the same thing. If no authority says it, that is evidence — not proof it is false, but a reason to wait.
- Check whether the claim asks you to act urgently or buy something. Urgency and selling are the two most common signs of a claim that profits from belief.
If a claim fails any of those four, do not share it. Sharing is publishing, and a share from a trusted friend carries more weight than the original post ever did. The full method — WHO’s seven steps, the difference between misinformation and disinformation, and checking images and video — is in How to check a health claim.
What organisations owe their readers
Organisations owe plain language, defined terms, dated figures, named sources, and a way to ask questions. They owe forms that can be completed without a dictionary, and websites where the answer is on the page rather than three clicks away. And they owe honesty about uncertainty: where the evidence is thin, say so, rather than sounding certain. A reader who is told “we do not know yet” can wait; a reader who is told something false cannot unlearn it as easily.
Frequently asked questions
Is health literacy just reading ability?
No. It is the ability to find, understand and use health information — which includes judging sources, doing the sums on a label or a bill, and knowing where to ask.
What is the difference between misinformation and disinformation?
Misinformation is false information shared without intent to mislead. Disinformation is false information shared deliberately to mislead. Malinformation is true information shared to cause harm, for example by taking it out of context.
How can I check a health claim before sharing it?
Check the source, check the date, check whether an official source says the same thing, and check whether the claim asks you to act urgently or buy something. If it fails any of those, do not share it.