"The exciting thing about organisational health literacy is that we can do something about it."

Dr Mike Oliver, Chartered Psychologist, Registered Health Psychologist and Steering Group member of Health Literacy UK, was recently commissioned by the NHS in England to ‘make the case for organisational health literacy’.

Delivering Improved Population Health Outcomes Tackling Health Inequalities and Improved Health and Care Performance is the end product and explains that organisational health literacy helps with:

• • Improved health outcomes for patients and others by having better understanding and engagement with their care. It should underpin all day-to-day healthcare interactions.
  • Tackling health inequalities by acknowledging and responding to the fact that different groups have different health literacy levels and have differing abilities to access and act on healthcare information.
  • Improved productivity through reducing waiting lists by improving attendance or improved self-management. A health literate organisation helps service users to find, understand, and use information and services to inform their health-related decisions and behaviours for themselves and others.

Dr Oliver is clear that the exciting thing about organisational health literacy is that we can do something about it.