Editorial: Moving health literacy from the individual to the community

Medicine and public health are of-ten described by their differences;the former focuses on individual patients, whereas the latter addresses health issues of populations, which are often related to non-medical determinants of health. Health literacy, strictly speak-ing, is a non-medical issue that is often viewed as a problem of individuals. We seek to identify those with low health literacy so we can eventually apply differ-ent interventions in the clinical setting, or provide a better explanation of treat-ment in the hope of making care more effective. Because individuals with low health literacy can be difficult to identify in clinical practice, some have argue