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Health literacy development is central to the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases

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posted on 2023-05-21, 17:10 authored by Osborne, RH, Shandell ElmerShandell Elmer, Hawkins, M, Cheng, CC, Batterham, RW, Dias, S, Good, S, Monteiro, MG, Mikkelsen, B, Nadarajah, RG, Fones, G
The WHO's report Health literacy development for the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) delivers practical what-to-do how-to-do guidance for health literacy development to build, at scale, contextually-relevant public health actions to reduce inequity and the burden of NCDs on individuals, health systems and economies. The key premise for health literacy development is that people's health awareness and behaviours are linked to lifelong experiences and social practices, which may be multilayered, hidden and beyond their control. Meaningful community engagement, local ownership and locally driven actions are needed to identify health literacy strengths, challenges and preferences to build locally fit-for-purpose and implementable actions. Health literacy development needs to underpin local and national policy, laws and regulations to create enabling environments that reduce community exposures to NCD risk factors. Deficit approaches and siloed health system and policy responses need to be avoided, focusing instead on integrating community-based solutions through co-design, cognisant of people's daily experiences and social practices.

History

Publication title

BMJ global health

Volume

7

Issue

12

Article number

010362

Number

010362

Pagination

1-8

ISSN

2059-7908

Department/School

School of Nursing

Publisher

BMJ Publishing Group Ltd

Place of publication

England

Rights statement

© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2022. Published by BMJ. This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cite.

Repository Status

  • Open

Socio-economic Objectives

Community health care; Behaviour and health

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