Abstract

Health literacy is one of the most critical issues threating the public health today and there are significant gaps behind the discipline of health literacy. Low health literacy was found to threaten the health and welfare of people. The past decades witnessed a revolutionary alteration in the health patterns and disease spread among the community from infectious diseases to chronic diseases such as, heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes and accidents. Furthermore, to enhance health status among the population with effective intervention methods, through health teaching, increasing access to health information and communication technologies will eliminate the health literacy consequences among different community levels, including children and adults. The aim of the present review was to find out the current status about research progress towards health literacy. Furthermore, to examine health literacy status, intervention, possible consequences and future prospective, and to find out the options for improving health literacy status and fill in the future research. A systematic review based on literature research related to health literacy covered the recent publication from 2000 to 2014 years. The results indicated that the wide range opportunities for improving health literacy are coming through health literacy intervention among target community. Future research concerning health literacy is still needed to give much more efforts in the field of community and community health works.

Key words: Health literacy, intervention, knowledge and community health.