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Belfast Healthy Cities

Our vision is that Belfast is recognised globally
as a healthy, equitable and sustainable city

Healthy Cities 21st Century

Understanding Health Literacy: Impacts on Inequalities Seminar 28 April 2016

Health Literacy is linked to literacy levels. Low health literacy has real effects on health and illness; people with low health literacy levels make more mistakes with medication or treatment. Health literacy is a social determinant of health. People with low health literacy rate their health as lower than people with higher health literacy levels; people with low health literacy and lower educational levels are more likely to have unhealthy lifestyles. In Northern Ireland 18% of working age adults perform at the lowest literacy levels. Health literacy is a catalyst for change and needed for people to understand and act upon health information. Fundamentally health literacy is a way to help and support people to make use of information.

This seminar further examined the concept of health literacy, learning from our WHO Healthy City colleagues in Finland and local colleagues. The seminar also launched an online Health Literacy resource designed to support development of this area in Belfast. You can find the Health Literacy Online Resource here.

Presentations

Supporting health literacy of vulnerable groups
Models of health literacy and action to support the needs of vulnerable groups, as piloted in Finland.
Sanna Salanterä, Professor of Clinical Nursing Science, Vice Head of the Department, Department of Nursing Science, University of Turku, Finland
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Building Health Literacy through Community-Pharmacy Partnership
Sharing learning collected over 10 years of the Building Community-Pharmacy Project
Joanne Morgan, Director, Community Development and Health Network
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Intervention Research On Health Literacy among the Ageing population (IROHLA) – towards improving the health literacy of older people in Europe
This presentation will outline work of the IROHLA, identifying interventions and provides evidence-based guidelines for policy and practice for local, regional and national government authorities to start action on health literacy for the ageing population.
Karolina Mackiewicz, Development Manager, Baltic Region Healthy Cities Association
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Photo Gallery

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