For December, we reflect literacy’s impact on human rights, universal health care, and epidemic preparedness.

When a social enterprise successfully executes an idea, it generates economic value beyond a transaction for a good or service. Depending on the enterprise and the problem it is solving, that economic value can be wide ranging: from being a catalyst for economic development, improved education, or better health outcomes.

The first in a series of language briefs; learn about the Arabic language and how it compares to the English language.

Arabic is one of the five most commonly spoken languages in the world, with approximately 350 million native speakers and 70 million non-native speakers primarily located in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, and other parts of the Middle East. The Arabic language can be more accurately described as a cluster of around 30 individually recognized dialects.

English has quite a few words that are derived from Arabic. Many of them refer to goods or other cultural exports, since initially English-speaking civilizations usually interacted with Arabic-speaking civilizations through trade.

Successfully self-managing and preventing type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) requires a significant level of health literacy proficiency, which in turn requires a significant level of reading literacy in order to properly follow self-management materials and diabetes education.

The impact of health literacy in preventing complex diseases becomes clear when looking at the prevalence of type 2 diabetes according to education level: 14% of adults without a high school diploma vs. 7.5% of those with high school or greater have T2DM. Individuals with less education are more likely to have a lower level of health literacy.

Given that 1 out of 6 U.S. adults are not functionally literate and another 64 million adults have only basic literacy proficiency, it is alarming but no surprise that 33% to 50% of the U.S. adult population is estimated to have low health literacy (LHL).

The critical role health literacy has in one’s quality of life and health outcomes is especially true in the case of self-management of complex diseases such as type 1 and type 2 diabetes. When patients are able to follow self-management interventions there is significant reduction in emergency department visits and hospitalizations as well as reduced disease severity overall.

Did you know as many as 1 in 5 people are thought to have some form of dyslexia? In the U.S. over 40 million adults have dyslexia yet only 2 million are diagnosed. The problem of underdiagnosing dyslexia is both a problem of insufficient funding and insufficient reading instruction which affects all children, even those without dyslexia. Read more to learn about how this came to be and free resources to help.

Only 4% of surveyed companies considered disability awareness in their hiring practices and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in 2020, missing out on many benefits that employees with disabilities offer. A meta-analysis of 39 studies conducted between 1997 and 2017 revealed 13 consistent benefits from hiring people with disabilities (PWD).

According to the Indigenous Language Institute, in the U.S. there were once more than 300 indigenous languages spoken and approximately 175 remain today. They also estimate that by 2050 only 20 (at most) will still be spoken without restoration efforts. This Indigenous Peoples’ Day we are taking time to gather and share resources concerning the erasure of Indigenous languages and current efforts for revitalization.

Despite the potential size of the dyslexic population and the large number of adults with low health literacy, there is alarmingly little research on dyslexia's impact on health literacy and patient education. Yet, the 30 years of research on patient education materials highlights the disconnect between those materials and many patients' capacity to understand them.

Teaching adults to read in the United States has had a long and frenetic history, in part because funding and program structure have historically been tied to national crises or imperatives. Yet developing funding and developing educational programming around national imperatives is a tragically ineffective method. Over the last 25 years the percentage of the U.S. working-age adults with functional print literacy has remained essentially unchanged at 20%.

Life-wide and lifelong learning recognizes that learning takes place across one's lifespan and in a variety of environments: at work, at home, and in a formal education setting. A shift to life-wide learning would recognize that adults pursue learning for needs and goals beyond college and career readiness.

While online learning is not a replacement for in-person learning, it certainly can enhance the experience and amplify outcomes. When the advantages brought by technology are fully implemented and are fit to the needs of students, online learning can be a great success.

We're celebrating International Literacy Day and applauding its theme, Literacy for a human-centered recovery: Narrowing the digital divide, by running a contest for the rest of September to help Adult Basic Education (ABE) and adult literacy programs while also narrowing that digital divide.

One ABE organization will win a cash prize of $500 and one individual will win a $25 Amazon gift card.

For the U.S. economy to fully recover after COVID-19, the scale of adult illiteracy needs to be addressed. In GogyUp's inaugural blog post, Co-Founder Ned Zimmerman-Bence connects the dots between the true scale of adult illiteracy, the chronic labor shortage, and the challenges the post-Covid recovery presents to U.S. employers.