Better to break the locks than hand out more keys: improving access to health care for everyone

Literacy is often referred to as a tool, but I prefer to think of it as a key. Many of us have multiple keys at our disposal for unlocking different kinds of knowledge – a key for understanding information about health, a key for understanding information about science, a key for negotiating our communities and cultures, a key for understanding written and spoken languages – and the more keys we have, the more knowledge we can unlock for ourselves. But if we don’t have the keys, either because we haven’t been given access or they are being kept from us, then the gatekeepers of that knowledge are ensuring we cannot have access to it. Too often in health, we as health professionals are the gatekeepers of access when those gates should be open wide.