Understanding Health Literacy: Impacts on Inequalities Seminar
Low health literacy has real effects on health and illness; people with low health literacy levels make more mistakes with medication or treatment. Those people also rate their health as lower and are more likely to have unhealthy lifestyles. In Northern Ireland 18% of working age adults perform at the lowest literacy levels.
The Chief Medical Officer, Dr Michael McBride welcomed delegates to the seminar and helped launch a new online Health Literacy resource designed to highlight this area. Other speakers included Professor Sanna Salanterä and Karolina Mackiewicz, from the WHO in Finland who shared their experiences and knowledge on how health literacy can support the health and wellbeing of citizens and health professionals. Joanne Morgan, Chief Executive, Community Development Health Network also highlighted a number of programmes running locally to improve the health literacy skills of people in communities, in particular the work of the Building Community-Pharmacy Project.