Frequently Asked Questions

Health literacy is how we understand information about health and health care, and how we apply it to our lives, use it to make decisions, and act on it.

Think about a time that you’ve used a health service. What was that experience like for you? 

• Could you find your way around? 
• Was the signage clear? 
• Did people speak clearly, in a friendly manner? 
• Did they help you understand your health information? 
• Did they allow time for questions? 
• Did written information (like information sheets) make sense? 

These are all examples of the health literacy environment.

By making our information and services easy to find, access, understand and use, we improve health equity outcomes so that people can make better decisions for themselves and their families.

Health literacy is important because the more we can understand about our health and health care, the healthier we can be. Improving our health literacy is one of the cheapest, easiest, and most effective ways of improving our health.

Think about your own experience .…

Have you ever left a health appointment not knowing exactly what you were meant to do? Did you forget? Not understand? Or was the information not clear?

You are not alone. Research suggests that when we are told health information, we can forget 80 percent of it immediately. The problem is that we have a lot happening. We need to think about diagnosis, treatment, medication, home care, follow up, and what to do later on. Plus, we might be in pain, feeling stressed, tired, or anxious.

Health literacy contributes to health inequities because people with the greatest challenges have poorer health outcomes. They may also be more reliant on services, healthcare providers, hospital and emergency services. It also means people are less able to use programs to keep them healthy.

Health literacy improvements help make the health literacy environment easier to navigate and use.

Health literacy first emerged from researchers who found that people with low literacy were having difficulty understanding written material. While the research at first focused on literacy, it soon expanded to think about health in a broader sense - how our health services look, feel, and are used by people every day.

When we talk about health literacy, we don’t mean reading or writing (although it does involve these skills). Instead, we mean health competency. For example, digital literacy is our ability to use computers and smartphones for everyday life. In the same way, health literacy is about our ability to find, access and use health information and services for everyday life.

Absolutely. Our level of health literacy is influenced by many things. This can include:

• Our knowledge, motivation, skills, confidence, stress levels, and supports in our life.
• How well services support us, communicate clearly, empower us, and understand us.
• Information about health in our local communities, networks, and friendship groups.

Seeing a dentist, for example, could be a good, neutral, or bad experience for you. The first time was probably scary or a bit overwhelming. But over time, you become more familiar and comfortable, you learn about your own health, what you can do about it. Your experience was also shaped by the care provided, how friendly the team was, and whether you felt supported.

We don’t think about people having low or high levels of health literacy.

Health literacy is a state, not a trait that is fixed in place. We can learn, adapt, and grow, with each new experience (even the bad ones teach us things).

The HeLLOTas Toolkit can help you. Think of it as a framework to help guide your thinking.

We have a self-paced, online checklist that you can complete. You can assess your own work area to find out where you can make changes. Then it can be as simple as picking a few actions you can focus on. These should be realistic and achievable.

We also have a set of online tools that you can use to make changes straight away.

It’s important to remember that it’s hard to do this work by yourself. Change takes time and requires commitment and energy. We recommend working in a small team and getting endorsement from your organisation.

You can reach out to TasCOSS. We can mentor you through the process to become a health literate organisation. We provide training and workshops on a range of health literacy topics.

When you start looking, you realise health literacy is all around us! Health literacy improvements can be things like:

• Writing in plain language so that most people can understand it.
• Speaking clearly, in a friendly and respectful way.
• Allowing time for questions and checking that we understand.
• Having a welcoming area, with clear signage that is easy to follow.
• Asking consumers how we can do things better and involving them in these decisions.
• Supporting staff to attend health literacy training or workshops.
• Including health literacy in policies, procedures and guidelines.

Good health literacy will have things like this included in policies, procedures, and guidelines.
 

Not at all. Plain language is about communicating with your audience, so they understand. When we use complex language or words, we end up excluding some people. By communicating more clearly, we can reach more people.

When organisations make health literacy improvements, it means that they may also meet or exceed accreditation standards. These standards cover areas such as client outcomes, consumer rights, evidence-based practice, and community development. We have mapped Quality Improvement Standards against the six dimensions of the HeLLOTas Toolkit. You can find this on the Resources page.

Yes, you can! It is very easy to support people to develop skills, for example, encourage them to ask questions, to help them find, understand and act on health and medical information.  We can also provide supportive environments that make it easier for people to get the information they need.  The HeLLOTas Toolkit is a good place start.

Absolutely! The tool is freely available for services, organisations, and community groups to support health literacy.

We encourage you to use this tool in your work and share it with colleagues.

We simply ask that you acknowledge TasCOSS when you use or refer to the tool so that others can find and benefit from it too.

Please remember that while the tool is free to use, it is copyright © TasCOSS, so please don't copy, change, adapt, republish, or use the tool for commercial purposes without our permission.

We provide free workshops, training, coaching and support to help health and community service organisations in Tasmania make health literacy improvements.

You can reach out to us any time to discuss your needs. Contact us at admin@tascoss.org.au to find out more.