Health literacy - more than just health knowledge!

03 Jun 2024

Second annual conference of the German Network for Health Literacy (DNGK) e. V. - together with the Public Health Centre Fulda (PHZF) - on 6 and 7 June 2024 at the Fulda University of Applied Sciences

The concept of "health literacy" has been an emerging field of research and application in Germany for many years now, summarising the individual abilities of people at an individual level that help them to find, understand, assess and use health information and services. However, in the spirit of the conference motto, health literacy comprises much more than just people's health knowledge, motivation and skills that enable them to make appropriate health decisions for themselves. The responsibility for this lies not only with the people themselves, but above all with the systems, such as the educational and training settings or the healthcare system. Ultimately, the extent of personal health literacy depends on the respective situation, the context of application, the complexity of the respective system and its framework conditions.

The course is being organised in cooperation with the Public Health Centre Fulda (PHZF), the National Action Plan for Health Literacy and the Alliance for Health Literacy in Schools. The conference aims to exchange research and practical experience on health literacy and bring together active and interested parties.

"It is extremely important to place the responsibility on the organisations and systems to design the offers, structures and processes in such a way as to help people achieve greater health literacy and support health-competent behaviour," says Prof. Dr Katharina Rathmann (DNGK e. V. board member, spokesperson and member of the PHZF steering committee), who has carried out intensive research and practical work on (organisational) health literacy in recent years (including in health care, schools and people in vulnerable situations).

The conference will be opened by two keynote presentations by Dr Christina Dietscher (Federal Ministry of Social Affairs, Health, Nursing and Consumer Protection Section VI, Vienna/Austria) entitled "Supporting health literacy in organisations and at system level - approaches, tools, experiences" and by Dr Saskia De Gani (Centre for Health Literacy, Careum Zurich/Switzerland) entitled "Challenges and opportunities of organisational health literacy in Switzerland: from a common understanding of the concept to implementation".

The program is diverse and offers presentation sessions as well as workshops and symposia with interactive (exchange) formats and methods. More than 60 people will contribute to the conference in the form of presentation sessions, workshops and symposia. The second annual conference of the DNGK in Fulda will focus on the specialisation areas central to organisational health literacy:

  • Professional health literacy (e.g. health, social, education and training professions)
  • Tools and instruments for measuring and funding organisational health literacy
  • Development of, access to and provision of reliable health information
  • Experiences with the implementation of organisational health literacy - theory and practice
  • Requirements for and experiences with measures to increase organisational health literacy

 

In total, there were well over 100 registrations for the conference, which admitted the venue's capacity to its limits. "The high number of registrations encourages us to hold the conference at regular intervals in order to offer a platform for exchange between researchers and applications in the field of (organisational) health literacy," says Prof. Dr Katharina Rathmann, who is responsible for the course in Fulda as conference president.

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