Background: Health literacy (HL) is a key component of health promotion and sustainability and contributes to well-being. Despite its global relevance, HL is an under-researched topic in South America but is now debuting its exploration in Brazil. To leverage its benefits for South America, the mere translation of validated tools into Portuguese is insufficient.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF(1) Background: Health literacy is considered a personal asset, important for meeting health-related challenges of the 21st century. Measures for assisting students' health literacy development and improving health outcomes can be implemented in the school setting. First, this is achieved by providing students with learning opportunities to foster their personal health literacy, thus supporting behavior change.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBundesgesundheitsblatt Gesundheitsforschung Gesundheitsschutz
July 2022
In the context of health promotion in terms of the Ottawa Charter, a series of tasks and functions are attributed to schools, including the reduction of health and social inequalities. However, important theoretical considerations and empirical findings from the sociology of education, which analyzes school as a hierarchizing, segregating, inequality-producing, and reproducing institution, hardly find place in the public health debate on school health promotion. In this discussion article, some positions on schools from the sociology of education and the normative framework for health promotion in schools are presented.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHealth literacy is a determinant of health and assessed globally to inform the development of health interventions. However, little is known about health literacy in countries with one of the poorest health indicators worldwide, such as Afghanistan. Studies worldwide demonstrate that women play a key role in developing health literacy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIssue Addressed: While multiple studies worldwide reveal the strong impact of various determinants on health literacy, empirical data on the link between health literacy and other important dimensions of health equity (such as quality of life, beliefs and health literacy in crisis-affected religious countries such as Afghanistan) is scarce. To inform and develop promising health promotion for people in need, we analysed the relationship between health literacy, quality of life and spiritual and religious beliefs.
Methods: In this first study on health literacy in Afghanistan, we interviewed 522 men and 324 women in the Ghazni province.
Bundesgesundheitsblatt Gesundheitsforschung Gesundheitsschutz
February 2020
The concept of digital health literacy can be regarded as the result of the increasing social permeation of digital media and their use in everyday life. Due to increasing accessibility and ubiquity, there is an increasing need not only for searching and finding, but especially for assessing the reliability as well as selecting and applying health information for one's own health concerns. In the context of digitization, it needs to be emphasized that users are not just passive recipients, but rather actively participate in the communication process by interacting with existing content or by sharing their own health-related information.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Health literacy is an important health promotion concern and recently children and adolescents have been the focus of increased academic attention. To assess the health literacy of this population, researchers have been focussing on developing instruments to measure their health literacy. Compared to the wider availability of instruments for adults, only a few tools are known for younger age groups.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Children and young people constitute a core target group for health literacy research and practice: during childhood and youth, fundamental cognitive, physical and emotional development processes take place and health-related behaviours and skills develop. However, there is limited knowledge and academic consensus regarding the abilities and knowledge a child or young person should possess for making sound health decisions. The research presented in this review addresses this gap by providing an overview and synthesis of current understandings of health literacy in childhood and youth.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF