Health literacy, from a reductionistic standpoint, could be viewed as a complement of individual skills needed to process and act on health information.However, such a limited perspective unnecessarily removes the individual from the broader array of social forces that influence health. Indeed, an ecological approach provides the contextualization needed to identify individuals with varying degrees of health literacy and construct long-term solutions to reduce the adverse health consequences of poor health literacy. The dearth of evidencebased outcomes data on health literacy interventions confirms the limitations of strategies that are not based on an ecological framework.