On 10th March 2025, CHAD and the Faculty of Public Health hosted this webinar with Dr Mike Oliver, registered Health Psychologist, Chartered Psychologist and Visiting Fellow of the University of Staffordshire.
Mike Oliver began by defining personal literacy as where people find information, understand and act upon it. Organisational health literacy was also discussed; including communicating health information in ways that other people can understand. A range of points were noted about why health literacy is important including: it can help individuals navigate health services, avoid unhealthy behaviours by making it easy for them to understand and communicate better with health staff. Mike also introduced the ‘Geodata Tool’ which plots out the local authority areas and what the health literacy areas are. Poor health literacy looked to be associated with socioeconomic deprivation and disparity.
This webinar highlights what can be done to improve this issue. For example, working out the reading age of documents using the NHS Medical Document Readability Tool to give an estimated UK reading age. If one communicates health information in ways others can understand, this will equate to improved health outcomes for service users and patients.
Paul Iggulden discussed his work around the health literacy agenda and the importance of raising awareness. The webinar ended but highlighting how vital it is to understand the need to support organisations to make cultural shifts and changes. By conducting research, Paul found that people wanted support and training around health literacy and subsequently received funding to develop a health literacy programme for Dorset.
You can download the speakers’ slides here.
Please also see the document “Addressing Health Inequalities through Health Literacy” that Mike referred to during the presentation.
A recording of the webinar is available below.
