This report provides a pragmatic approach to health literacy development for the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). It provides new insights into what people know about NCDs and their risk factors, and these new insights reveal the mechanisms behind how people, communities, and organizations learn and can be supported to take action against NCDs, including their risk factors and determinants.

Importantly, health literacy is understood as a social practice whereby decisions about health, and the available support to change to, or maintain, healthy behaviours, are determined by powerful and unique community norms and cultures, and organizational and political factors impacting communities.