Health and wellbeing remain out of reach for millions of people around the world. A key enabler to address this gap and accelerate progress is health literacy, understood as the knowledge and social practice of accessing, understanding, appraising, remembering and using information about health and health care. Developing health literacy supports people, communities, and organizations to understand, recognize and take action on health needs and wellbeing.
To ensure WHO Member States’ actions on NCDs and their risk factors are effective and reach those in needs and at risk of being left behind, a health literacy development and responsiveness approach is required. Only with the help of a contextual and equitable health literacy approaches can we understand who is being left behind, why this happens, and then improve health outcomes at a global scale for all.
In light of the fundamental role of health literacy development for effective and equitable NCD prevention and control, WHO has launched a four-volume report Health Literacy Development for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases. The report is the product of a collaboration between WHO’s Global Coordination Mechanism on NCDs, WHO’s Health Promotion Department and the Centre for Global Health and Equity at Swinburne University, Australia. The publication features an introduction into health literacy development as a globally relevant perspective for NCD prevention and control, recommended actions, and a series of global case studies from WHO National Health Literacy Demonstration Projects.
This virtual event will mark the official launch of the WHO health literacy report to support Member States in operationalizing health literacy development as a critical determinant of health, empowering individual citizens and enabling their engagement in collective health promotion action.
The webinar will also showcase how Member States have developed, implemented and monitored national and local strategies for strengthening health literacy in all populations through case studies from WHO National Health Literacy Demonstration projects (NHLDPs).