An individual’s health literacy is their ability to find, use and apply health information and services to promote their health and the health and wellbeing of others. Improving health literacy can result in individuals making more educated and informed health related decisions and consequently having better health outcomes.
In locations such as Tasmania, where health and educational outcomes are lower than the national average, improving health literacy has the potential to have a large positive influence on the community. While improving health literacy is beneficial at any age, improving children’s health literacy can be particularly impactful, as it has been shown to improve their health outcomes throughout their lives. HealthLit4Kids is an education package designed for use in schools to raise awareness of health and promote discussions about health among teachers, students, families and communities. The program has been running in five Tasmanian primary schools since 2018 to support classroom teachers to develop health literacy in their students and encourage schools to embrace it across their curriculum. This presentation will present findings from research undertaken with teachers, parents and school leaders from these five schools as well as detail the next steps required for scalability and sustainability of the program.