Webwatch: The Health Literacy Place

The Health Literacy Place website supports health and social care staff across Scotland to collaborate with patients, service-users and carers, to enable them to navigate services, and access and understand information about their health and wellbeing.

 

It provides staff with tools, techniques, learning resources and evidence to help them work with patients and service users to build their knowledge, understanding, skills and confidence to self-manage and engage in shared decision-making with health and social care professionals.

The new resource is a key deliverable from Making it Easy, Scottish Government’s national health literacy action plan – which highlights:

• We all need to be involved in health and social care to systematically address health literacy as a priority in our efforts to improve health and reduce health inequalities.
• Low health literacy leads to poor health and widens health inequality.
• Sets out an ambition for all of us in Scotland to have the confidence, knowledge, understanding and skills we need to live well, with any health condition we have.

NHS Education for Scotland’s Knowledge Services Group leads development of this resource and the associated development of workforce health literacy capabilities and activities.

Ann Wales, Programme Director for Knowledge Management in NHS Education for Scotland said: “Health and social care needs are complex and specific to individuals, navigating the system can also be complex as well. The Health Literacy Place provides staff with tools and learning resources to help them engage with services users in new ways, going beyond providing information to enable people to get personal meaning from that information and to use knowledge in shared decision-making with health and care practitioners.

“We want all health and social care staff to be aware of and engage in the website and help to make health literacy an integral part of day to day work in Scotland’s health and social care.“

Visit the Health Literacy Place here: www.healthliteracyplace.org.uk