NHS Education for Scotland (NES) and Health Education England (HEE) have collaborated to develop a new, free elearning module for people working in health and care to understand the role health literacy plays in the health and social care systems.

Health literacy is about people having enough knowledge, understanding, skills and confidence to use health information, to be active partners in their care, and to navigate health and social care systems. Therefore, to access, assess and apply health information, people need to be health literate. People working in health and social care need to be aware of health literacy and of the techniques that can help to increase understanding.

The elearning resource takes about 30 mins to complete. At the end of the module learners will know why health literacy is important and how to use some simple techniques including TeachBack, chunk and check, using pictures and simple language to improve communication and check understanding with others. After each section learners complete an action plan detailing how they plan to use the techniques in practice. This plan can be used as evidence of learning in appraisals or professional portfolios.

This elearning resource is pitched educationally as an introduction to health literacy, why it is important and the core techniques that can be used to improve health literacy. The resource supports a more blended approach to learning and spreading awareness of health literacy, building on the NES resource in The Health Literacy Place and HEE’s health literacy toolkit .

For more information about the free Health Literacy elearning programme, including details on how to access, visit https://www.e-lfh.org.uk/programmes/healthliteracy/.