Health and care literacy
People make decisions about their health every day. To do this consciously and in a well thought out way, they need the right information and reference tools that they understand and can use. That requires health skills, and those can be acquired. Everyone, at every level, can contribute towards this and is responsible for doing so.
The Dr. Daniël De Coninck Fund encourages the development and strengthening of health skills in primary care. Organisations that want to get involved in this area can work on every link in the information chain: providing access to information, understanding the information, interpreting it and making decisions.
They can target interventions to improve the individual skills and capabilities of the person with a care need and those close to them, or work on the processes and systems involved in delivering well-being and care.
Understanding organisational health literacy thanks to a video!
A pro-health literacy organisation rests on two fundamental pillars:
- active user participation
- integrating health literacy into its vision and management.
Accessibility is key. You can only achieve this by continuously training all employees and providing the necessary resources for concrete actions.
- verbal communications adapted to everyone
- simplified and inclusive information media
- the organisation is easily accessible to everyone both physically (building, navigation, etc.) and online (website)
Why? Because health literacy organisations pay particular attention to vulnerable people.