At the 71st session of the WHO Regional Committee for Europe (RC71), a side event shed light on the importance of health literacy in the context of behavioural and cultural insights. Health literacy is defined as the capability of an individual to access, understand and use health information, and is critical to good health and well-being.
Ambitious health goals can only be reached if we understand the barriers people experience in adopting healthy behaviours and using health services. The event focused on country experiences and invited Member States to discuss how national health authorities can strengthen their work in this field and engage with WHO in defining the way forward.
Engagement with the topic is already high. Countries across the WHO European Region are undertaking numerous projects to measure health literacy and improve understanding regarding noncommunicable diseases and school health. Nineteen Member States in the Region have developed or are developing health literacy policies. Nonetheless, there is room for deeper engagement.
Health literacy challenged
The European Health Literacy Survey in 2011 found that nearly half of all adults in 8 European countries had limited health literacy skills. The COVID-19 pandemic reiterated the critical importance of health literacy. It challenged people’s capacity to assimilate and apply often complex information. At times, it was evolving quickly and included plenty of contradictory and false information.
Recent data from behavioural insights surveys conducted across the Region demonstrate that people who are older, have a chronic illness, have poorer mental health or poorer well-being also tend to have lower health literacy related to COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccination.
The data also show that a higher health literacy level is one of the most important drivers for changing people’s behaviours and perceptions, including persuading them to follow public health advice and trust health professionals.
Following the adoption of the WHO European Programme of Work, health literacy was incorporated into the “Healthier behaviours” flagship initiative, and health literacy is now prioritized alongside broader behavioural and cultural determinants of health.
Portugal recruits micro-influencers
Gathering, adopting and integrating health literacy insights at a country level can help improve health interventions more broadly. To this end, a massive effort in Portugal saw 5000 micro-influencers trained by the Directorate-General of Health to help convey COVID-19-related health information to local communities.
As influential members of these communities, the micro-influencers share up-to-date health information tailored to local needs, concerns and conditions, to help people remain “COVID literate”. They ensure that their followers have access to the correct public health information delivered from a trusted source, while also giving feedback to national health authorities on how information and restrictions are being received in local communities, and any misperceptions that may have evolved.
Following an introduction to the flagship initiative, the side event at RC71 looked at how health literacy can be measured, and how these data can be used to achieve impact. Member States were also invited to help develop a regional strategic framework on behavioural and cultural insights for discussion at the next Regional Committee in 2022.