The dark side of the moon: can critical health literacy offer solutions to the fundamental problems of health literacy?

Abstract

This commentary is intended as a response to ongoing concerns expressed about fundamental limitations of current research, policy, and practice surrounding health literacy. These concerns emphasise the individualistic and reductionist approaches which often dominate health literacy work, as well as a neglect of broader structural factors in addressing pressing public health issues. The potential of critical health literacy as a concept and practical approach which responds to these critiques is presented. A case is made that critical health literacy, as a concept that operates at both the community and individual level, offers an opportunity to address and eventually overcome these basic limitations in current health literacy approaches.