Data-Driven Maternal Health Literacy Promotion and a Postscript on Its Implications

Scientific discovery and global health policy are moving health literacy promotion and maternal-child health from the fringes of research and public health to the forefront of healthcare reform [1]. In 2011 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Shanghai Declaration [2]. The Declaration highlights new understanding of the origins of health and disease in early development. It calls on all nations to apply this knowledge to reduce the burdens of chronic disease and related disparities worldwide. The Declaration recommends a specific intervention strategy: promote health literacy across the life course, particularly in parents and children, and empower women. This chapter explores findings and implications of the Life Skills Progression Maternal Health Literacy studies. These LSP-MHL studies evaluated implementations of an intervention designed to promote health literacy in parents and empower women in the U.S. First, the chapter reports findings of the most recent of five published LSP-MHL studies with discussion of its implications for future work in this line of inquiry. A postscript highlights two of many implications of the LSP-MHL intervention studies for health literacy research in the third era of modern healthcare.