Seminars
A Whole of Society Approach - Health Literacy Seminar
The recent draft World Health Organization (WHO) Roadmap on health literacy recommends a four level approach. This seminar presented case studies at the four levels: policy; organisational; community and individual and explored the way forward to strengthen health literacy in Northern Ireland.
Almost 100 participants registered to hear speakers from across the UK and Ireland. Chaired by Dr Bernadette Cullen, the speakers included Chief Medical Officer, Dr Michael McBride; Gillian McCarroll, Ballybeen Women's Centre; Jim Phillips, Centre for Empowering Patients and Communities (CEmPaC); Helen McNamee, Community Development and Health Network; Edel Fortune, St Patrick's Mental Health Service; and Professor Gill Rowlands, Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University. Further details and speaker presentations can be found here.
Capacity Building
Belfast Healthy Cities have hosted a number of capacity building seminars at which speakers from Northern Ireland, Ireland, UK and across Europe have provided examples of health literacy programmes.
4th European Health Literacy Conference
The 4th European Health Literacy Conference took place in Dublin in March 2019.
The overarching theme for the conference was Building health literate societies and the aim was to:
-
foster knowledge transfer between researchers, practitioners and policymakers regarding the creation of health literate societies
-
promote evidence-based actions and practices regarding health literacy and society
-
promote health literacy to reduce inequality in health within society
Anne McCusker, Programme Manager, Belfast Healthy Cities was invited to participate in the expert panel in the plenary debate on ‘how to build health literate societies’. This session also included contributions from representatives from Austria; Ireland; Finland; USA; and World Health Organization.
5th Health Literacy UK Conference
Hosted by Belfast for the first time, the 5th Health Literacy Conference 'Making Life Better' welcomed over 100 partipcants from across the UK and Ireland. Professor Don Nutbeam, Professor of Public Health in Sydney, Australia provided the keynote address. The conference also allowed delegates to share current health literacy thinking, practice and research from across the UK and Europe as well as providing a networking opportunity with key experts in health literacy. More information here.
Presentations from the conference can be found on the UK Health Literacy website.