Courses

This course explains how unmet literacy needs affect adults in daily life. It illustrates hows how these needs can create problems for individuals, organisations, staff, and the services they provide. It highlights why using a literacy‑friendly approach makes things easier and more effective for organisations.  It explains what a literacy‑friendly approach involves and outlines standards that organisations can use to become truly ‘literacy friendly’.  The videos offer practical, real‑world examples that show how recognising and responding to literacy needs can lead to better interactions and improved outcomes for everyone involved.  lets-talk-about-literacy-factsheet.pdf

Health literacy means being able to understand health information well enough to take care of yourself. It’s about knowing how to get the information you need, make sense of it, and use it to make good choices.  This course talks about the importance of health literacy and encourages patients or users of health services to ask questions of their healthcare providers.  Questions increase knowledge of medical conditions and how medication works.  Being health literate means that patients can better understand their health issues and what they need to do to manage their conditions.  Good health literacy reduces the number of GP and hospital visits and improves outcomes for patients.

There is lots of useful information here that that would benefit anyone who regularly engages with the public or with colleagues, not only those working in healthcare. I found the Universal Precautions video especially valuable, along with the reminder to Be Aware and Respond Sensitively.

This course contains practical information on how to make things Relevant, Usable, Understandable and Findable. It also includes tips on structure and design which will prove useful to people and organisations who are trying to get a message out that can be understood by a broad range of readers. It has made me aware of how simple changes to language and presentation, can make the message easier to understand.