Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Meeting colleagues

Today I met with colleagues in Melbourne who are considering health literacy plans for their organisations. It's great to see that health literacy has become such a big priority for many services, particularly community health services who are often grappling with ways to work across very diverse communities.
For people who are considering health literacy 'action' plans you may find the website for Health Literacy Wisconsin helpful. It is listed amongst my websites on the right.
Our hospital has done some good work around organisational capacity and is currently considering how to integrate the key concepts of health promotion across the various hosptial policies.
I believe Plenty Valley Community Health is also doing some great developmental work in collaboration with Monash University.
Finally, for all of those who are interested in following a discussion on health literacy and the social determinants of health, I have added a list serv address to my websites (compliments of Spase from the Centre for Ethnicity and Health). There is an interesting discussion underway about whether health literacy is a social determinant or a more downstream issue - a consequence of poor education, social economic factors etc.