About

Making it Easier

Scotland’s Health Literacy Action Plan

In 2014, we published Making it Easy a Health Literacy Action plan for Scotland. This was Scotland’s first Health Literacy Action Plan and it set out actions to help NHS Scotland rise to the challenge of responding to people’s health literacy needs.

In 2017, we published Making it Easier – Scotland’s Healthy Literacy Action Plan. This builds on what we’ve learned so far about health literacy and sets out plans to:

• share the learning from Making it Easy across Scotland;
• embed ways to improve health literacy in policy and practice;
• develop more health literacy responsive organisations and communities;
• design supports and services to better meet people’s health literacy levels.

Health literacy affects all of us, whether we have a health problem or not. We all have a role in working together to address health literacy, whether we work in health or social care, or part of the third sector, or as teachers, employers, community workers – or indeed as relatives, carers, friends and colleagues. Strong social connections nurture good health literacy.

The Scottish Health Literacy Action Plan Implementation Group (SHLAPIG) brings together a wide range of health and social care partners including;

• Scottish Government Person Centred Care Team,
• Health Care Improvement Scotland (HiS)
• NHS Education Scotland (NES)
• Public Health Scotland
• NHS Inform
• The Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland (TheALLIANCE)
• Voluntary Health Scotland (VHS)

The group works collaboratively to raise awareness of health literacy and help achieve our ambition for Scotland to be a health literate society that enables all of us to have the confidence, knowledge, understanding and skills to maintain good health.