What is health literacy?
Health literacy is about people being able to understand health information. It’s about us making it easier for them to do this. It’s talking to patients using everyday words. It’s writing to them in a way that’s clear. This helps our patients make informed choices about their health.
It is important that health information is written in a way that can be understood so that people can make informed choices about their health. The average reading age of adults in the UK is 9-11 years old. Half of adults find it hard to understand health information. So they struggle to use it to help their health and wellbeing. This creates health inequalities.
People with low health literacy:
We can all share clearer health information. We can all speak and write in ways that make it easier for our patients to understand.
We can write in a clear way, at the average UK reading age. We can use as little medical jargon as possible. We can talk about health using everyday words.
We can check with patients if we’ve explained clearly before they go home. The regional health literacy team is here to help with this.
Our work
Our goal is to make sure that the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care System (NENC ICS) communicates information to all people in a way that is easy for them to understand.
Click here to see a copy of the work plan for the regional health literacy team.
Click here to see the PowerPoint video of our work plan.
Meet the team
Find us: We are based at South Tyneside District Hospital but cover the whole of the North East and North Cumbria Region.
Contact us: stsft.nenchealthliteracy@nhs.net
Health Literacy Training
We are busy developing a programme of health literacy training. We are creating different levels of training that will help you to understand health literacy and how to use it in your work.
The following training will be available:
If you are interested in health literacy training for your team, please email the regional health literacy team at stsft.nenchealthliteracy@nhs.net
In the meantime, the courses below may be helpful for you. Click on the links to access the training.
Writing
Here you can find some writing advice. The links below give useful advice on writing in a simple way.
Type or copy and paste your writing into this webpage. It will suggest how to make it clearer. For example, it will highlight sentences that are too long, written in the passive voice, or words people might find hard.
