**3. A contemporary view of educating elders for health: Insights for educational practice in clinical and community settings**

This section focuses on the relationship between older people and health education, as it relates to men with prostate cancer. Men's knowledge and understanding of learning about health, both in a biomedical and socio-cultural sense, is essential during the prostate cancer trajectory. Davis et al. (2008) discuss the importance for health care professionals of recognizing factors that contribute to elder's low health literacy, which may be increasing. Health literacy is a central to successful communication between health care professionals and elderly patients. It is not only essential for elderly patients to be equipped with appropriate knowledge of the disease process so as to be actively involved in their care, but health education must support patients to become more autonomous. Education for empowerment, as pioneered by Paulo Freire, requires a health education process centered in dialog between educators and learners (Wallerstein & Bernstein, 1988). Educating today's older people about cancer requires new educational strategies, particularly new education technologies that simplify complex cancer information and facilitate learning. Older people are active users of computers and the internet; misconceptions to the contrary must not shape health care professionals' beliefs about older people's ability to learn about their health (Alpay et al., 2004).
