Health boss claims poor literacy preventing people understanding medical letters

The director of public health for Newcastle and Gateshead, Alice Wiseman, has said more needs to be done to improve literacy to reduce obstacles to health services and general wellbeing. The comments come from an interview with Ms Wiseman this morning on BBC Radio’s flagship show The Today programme. 

Ms Wiseman said: “At a very fundamental level reading shapes our access to the world but it also…brings much joy and improves wellbeing across the population. From my perspective, if every child could have a bedtime story, I think we would start to see some real changes in terms of health outcomes. A longer life and a happier life.”

When asked what the average reading age for children was in Newcastle and Gateshead, Ms Wiseman said it was between 10 and 11 years. 

Speaking about the impact of poor literacy, Ms Wiseman continued: “What this actually does is stop us being able to access the support services we need, when we need them. We can’t access health information, we can’t understand the letters we are getting from hospitals or doctors unless we do work around that.”

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According to Ms Wisman, hospitals across the North East are reviewing how they communicate with patients, however the vice president of the association of directors of public health went on to say it would be better to help people improve their literacy earlier. 

Ms Wiseman said: “It would even better if we didn’t have to be looking retrospectively back at what we have to do to accommodate, and support people to learn to read in the first palace, and I think this is just really fundamental in terms of improving public health,  improving the population’s health over a longer period of time.” 

Ten local authorities across the region, including Gateshead and Newcastle, now have  “reading for wellbeing” projects, initiated originally by best-selling author Ann Cleeves to mark the 21st anniversary of her internationally renowned ‘Vera’ detective series.

Words: Austen Shakespeare