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HealthLit4Kids study protocol; crossing boundaries for positive health literacy outcomes

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journal contribution
posted on 2018-06-01, 00:00 authored by Rose Nash, Shandell Elmer, Katy Thomas, Richard Osborne, Kate MacIntyre, Becky Shelley, Linda Murray, Siobhan Harpur, Diane Webb
BACKGROUND: Health attitudes and behaviours formed during childhood greatly influence adult health patterns. This paper describes the research and development protocol for a school-based health literacy program. The program, entitled HealthLit4Kids, provides teachers with the resources and supports them to explore the concept of health literacy within their school community, through classroom activities and family and community engagement. METHODS: HealthLit4Kids is a sequential mixed methods design involving convenience sampling and pre and post intervention measures from multiple sources. Data sources include individual teacher health literacy knowledge, skills and experience; health literacy responsiveness of the school environment (HeLLO Tas); focus groups (parents and teachers); teacher reflections; workshop data and evaluations; and children's health literacy artefacts and descriptions. The HealthLit4Kids protocol draws explicitly on the eight Ophelia principles: outcomes focused, equity driven, co-designed, needs-diagnostic, driven by local wisdom, sustainable, responsive, systematically applied. By influencing on two levels: (1) whole school community; and (2) individual classroom, the HealthLit4Kids program ensures a holistic approach to health literacy, raised awareness of its importance and provides a deeper exploration of health literacy in the school environment. The school-wide health literacy assessment and resultant action plan generates the annual health literacy targets for each participating school. DISCUSSION: Health promotion cannot be meaningfully achieved in isolation from health literacy. Whilst health promotion activities are common in the school environment, health literacy is not a familiar concept. HealthLit4Kids recognizes that a one-size fits all approach seldom works to address health literacy. Long-term health outcomes are reliant on embedded, locally owned and co-designed programs which respond to local health and health literacy needs.

History

Journal

BMC public health

Volume

18

Article number

690

Pagination

1-13

Location

London, England

ISSN

1471-2458

eISSN

1471-2458

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2018, The Author(s)

Issue

1

Publisher

BioMed Central