By linking smoking to lung cancer and a myriad of other diseases, tobacco use has fallen rapidly since the famous 1964 Surgeon General’s Warning came out. This report proved that smoking was harmful to your health, and it was able to keep young people from starting to smoke and help smokers quit. Emphasizing lessons learned from tobacco control and acknowledging the reality that better health outcomes cannot be achieved without paying greater attention to poor Americans, if I were President, I would champion a policy to mandate health literacy classes nationwide in our school system. Modern health care is complex, and many patients struggle to obtain, process, communicate, and understand even basic health information and services. Health literacy is a major health investment and it needs long-term commitment, which is why my program would begin in kindergarten and stretch all the way through high school. By installing this policy in the school system, we would be able to ensure not only that it reaches all demographics but also that it is able to reach them at an age young enough where these lessons are taken to heart and actively deployed. …show more content…
Only 12 percent of Americans have an adequate level of health literacy, resulting in an additional $73 billion annually in healthcare expenditures (White, 2008). The ramifications for people with low to moderate healthcare literacy skills include higher medical costs due to more medication and treatment errors, more frequent hospitalizations, longer hospital stays, more visits to their healthcare provider, and a lack of necessary skills to obtain needed