Health Literacy and Environmental Health Awareness

I am preparing to take two online courses this fall offered by Georgia Health Sciences University. One course is in environmental health. I plan to write a paper regarding health literacy and environmental awareness. An article by D. W. Baker (2006) addresses the meaning of health literacy in terms of the reading and writing that constituted literacy when I was growing up. But literacy today extends the use to use computers and mobile devices. There appears to be a huge and growing literature on mHealth - regarding things like health-related applications running on tablets and smart phones.

http://mashable.com/2011/08/09/kids-tech-developmental-health/

I have not yet concluded what to think about the pros and cons of children growing up in an electronically connected world. As a person who sometimes finds that eye contact interferes with my ability to think while speaking, the article above caught my eye. It is apparent to me that technology is changing humanity in parts of the world in which electronic devices are everywhere. This video of a child's first experience with an iPad is interesting. What are the implications for her future health literacy?



Reference

Baker, D. W. (2006). The meaning and the measure of health literacy. Journal of General Internal Medicine: Official Journal of the Society for Research and Education in Primary Care Internal Medicine, 21(8), 878-883.