Health literacy is the ability to access, comprehend, and act upon medical information to make health care decisions. In the United States, 12% of adults have proficient health literacy. Low health literacy has been associated with worse outcomes in several chronic medical conditions. In addition, low health literacy has been associated with longer hospital stays. In the urologic oncology literature low health literacy is associated with increased minor complications following radical cystectomy. There remains sparse data on health literacy and its impacts on prostate, kidney, testicular and penile cancer care. Going forward, in order to provide the best urologic oncology care to our patients it is critical to account for patients' health literacy status.

Socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities in genitourinary malignancies remain a critical problem. Variations in initial and subsequent treatments, including survivorship care, likely contribute to these disparities. While the prevalence of genitourinary cancer survivors continues to grow, heterogeneity in survivorship care threatens to increase disparities. Several social factors, such as insurance status, language, and geography, drive heterogeneity observed in survivorship care. Linguistically tailored, culturally relevant survivorship is an essential component of a multidisciplinary effort to address racial/ethnic disparities among patients with genitourinary malignancies. Survivorship care is an essential component of cancer treatment, however if it is not developed and tested among a diverse patient population, it can lead to a widening of disparities observed among patients with genitourinary malignancies.