Health Literacy

Health literacy means being able to access, understand, appraise and use information and services in ways that promote and maintain good health and well-being (WHO).

Health Literacy Toolkit: This toolkit has been created to help colleagues and partners across City & Hackney ensure health information is accessible and easily understood by all.

Health literacy can look like many different things:

  1. Being able to understand health information (written or verbal) such as medication instructions or information about a condition and apply it to yourself.
  2. Being able to identify your symptoms and discuss these with a health professional.
  3. Being able to identify health misinformation online.
  4. Choosing a healthy lifestyle to prevent poor health and feel your best.

Everyone has a role to play – from doctors interacting with patients to community leaders sharing information within their networks.

Having good health literacy is important because it allows us to have better health. We are more likely to use and navigate services that can help us, attend important appointments, and have healthier behaviours such as eating well, exercising, and not smoking (NIHR).

Poor health literacy impacts some groups of people more than others, and therefore widens health inequalities. We are taking action in City and Hackney to improve the health literacy of everyone who lives and works here.

How we work to improve health literacy

Health literacy is broad so our approach is to work across three different levels:

  1. System level – i.e. public health, NHS, local government
  2. Organisational level – i.e. cross-sector teams and organisations
  3. Community and individual level – i.e. local voluntary and community sector organisations who work with residents.

We offer:

Work with us

If you would like to learn more about health literacy and how we can support your work in this area, please email us at phh@cityandhackneyph.hackney.gov.uk 

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