articles that highlight an area of study that is not often addressed: social influence factors that extend the effects of a person’s health literacy on other individuals. The question to be asked in this context is whether a person’s health literacy has the potential to affect health behavior of other persons, their health status, their care and outcomes. This is immediately relevant for anybody who is dependent on someone else, such as children are dependent on their parents and vice versa elderly persons become dependent of caregivers, most often their children. But actually social influence of health literacy is conceivable in other constellations, for instance within couples. Is it possible that the spouse’s health literacy affects health behavior and outcomes of a person? Would it be possible that your spouse’s high level of health literacy balances out your own low level? Or, vice versa, could it be that your partner’s lower level of health literacy prevents your own high level from attaining its usual benefits? And how does gender affect these relationships?