Health literacy is recognized as a key determinant of public health. This term refers to individuals’ motivation and ability to access, understand, evaluate, and use information to make decisions about their health. The level of health literacy is a cause for concern, particularly in Europe, including France. Improving health literacy is a major public health challenge to ensure that the population is able to take better care of their health. The priority today is to implement actions to reverse this situation: to identify the barriers preventing people from achieving sufficient health literacy, to incorporate this concern into public policy, to ensure the creation of environments that accommodate low levels of health literacy, and to improve health communication. A major international research effort must be undertaken to raise literacy levels among as many people as possible.