Health Literacy: Measurements, Interventions and Evaluation

Dear Colleagues,

Health literacy (HL) is a fast-evolving area of research, practice, and policy. Over the past years, three main trends have emerged in this field.

There has been a widening of the understanding of HL, regarding both its “health” and its “literacy” components. Apart from referring to the presence or absence of disease, HL has broadened to include positive health, reflecting a salutogenic approach. As such, it is not only relevant to health care, but also to public health. Regarding the “literacy” aspect, the term has expanded from merely referring to functional skills to also include interactive and critical competences. So, in addition to understanding health-relevant information it also refers to the full process of accessing, evaluating, and applying health information throughout the life course and in specific situations and contexts, such as the COVID-19 infodemic.

As a more comprehensive concept, the conceptualization, definitions, and measurement tools for HL differentiate between specific aspects of HL as related to specific populations, lifestyles, stages in the life course, health and disease issues, and when applying both conventional and more innovative health information sources.

Finally, HL is now understood not only as a personal competence, but as a relational, interactive concept. While personal HL is dependent on the individual’s specific context in which HL is applied, the interactive nature of the concept is shown in the development of concepts, definitions, measurement tools and interventions for organizational HL, as exemplified by organizations, settings, and systems which are health literate, health literacy friendly, and health literacy responsive.

This Special Issue of IJERPH will highlight these new developments in HL. Therefore, we particularly invite the submission of articles presenting the development, validation, and use of new measurement instruments for general, comprehensive, or specific aspects of personal HL and for the measurement of organizational HL, as well as evaluated and innovative interventions to improve personal HL, organizational HL, or both. 

Prof. Dr. Jürgen Pelikan
Prof. Dr. Diane Levin-Zamir
Prof. Dr. Orkan Okan
Dr. Kristine Sorensen
Prof. Dr. Stephen Van Den Broucke
Guest Editors

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