Reintegrate Empowerment and Health Literacy to Advance Public Health and Healthcare Delivery

Empowerment has been described as a prerequisite for health and the ultimate goal of health literacy in both clinical practice and health promotion. Improving health literacy and empowerment is central to national and international public health and healthcare policies. While initially merged in the construct of critical health literacy, and currently linked without question in policy and discourse, health literacy and empowerment have been dichotomized - treated as two separate fields of study and practice - and partitioned further into condition-based lines of inquiry. Few studies have addressed both concepts. Indeed, references to empowerment in health literacy studies have decreased over the last decade. This chapter summarizes and interprets the significance of these fault lines for current and future research. Divergent clinical and health promotion perceptions of health empowerment, its expected outcomes, processes, interventions and measures are reviewed. Gaps in the literature are identified and recommendations are suggested to build a more robust science around health literacy and empowerment by addressing those limitations. The chapter reinforces recent calls for increased attention to empowerment in health literacy research and the reintegration of the critical health literacy concept to better reflect policy, achieve global public health goals, advance healthcare delivery, and foster multidisciplinary career opportunities for students, researchers, and practitioners.