Letter: Disinformation now epidemic crisis

Health literacy is a new term coined to address an old issue: what people need to know to stay healthy, prevent disease and navigate their health care system to ensure their best outcomes.

Traditionally, that knowledge was perceived as a personal responsibility, passed within families and neighbors and promoted by care providers. More recently, the support network has expanded to schools, places of worship, workplaces and disease-specific support groups, making it a whole-society endeavor.

However, health literacy is directly tied to social determinants. This is because poverty, lack of education, and exposure to environmental and mental conditions outside individual control often shape our understanding and choices.

With the evolving nature of medical sciences and the complicated labyrinth of our health care system, health literacy is already a challenge for most of us. Now add on other issues: corporate food industries, pharmaceutical and private health insurance companies continuing to market unhealthful or trumped-up products to consumers, all playing the Lake Wobegon tune that they are all handsome, strong and above average, for they would advertise anything to maximize corporate profits.

Furthermore, medical disinformation has reached an epidemic crisis with conspiracy theories in social media. All these factors are complicating our health literacy.

Measure 111 now enshrines the right to health care in Oregon's Constitution. We may not be able to cure all the negative social determinants of disease, but establishing a single-payer system could improve our health literacy by mitigating the ill effects of commercialization and politicization of our health care.

Chinh Le, MD

Corvallis