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October - Health Literacy Month: Celebrating a Decade of Action in Health Literacy

What better way to celebrate Health Literacy Month worldwide than by acknowledging the 10th year anniversary of the IUHPE Working Group on Health Literacy? Beginning with preliminary meetings in Vancouver in 2007, the GWG-Health Literacy was officially established through a Resolution in the General Assembly in Geneva in 2010. The group has been working continuously over the past decade to promote health literacy in health promotion through research, practice and policy.

Beginning with a vision expressed in the group’s Mission Statement, the group seeks “to initiate and support action, policy and research on health literacy, acknowledging the contribution of health literacy to reducing disparities in the promotion of health and wellbeing, and sustainable development, and to the pursuit of equity within and between countries, in the global context.”

Toward this end, the group continuously reaches out to include active members from the IUHPE’s regions, and from a wide variety of professional and academic fields. We are privileged to have world-renowned health promotion experts active in the group, alongside promising students and early career professionals - all working together.

The group liaises with a rich array of partners such as the Asian Health Literacy Association, European Association of Health Literacy, HARC (US), WHO, Health Promoting Hospitals Networks, International Health Literacy Association, Bridge for Health, EUPHA and many more. The group has participated in projects such as the Diabetes Literacy Project and the Health Literacy of School Children Project (in Germany), taught in Summer Schools, formed research groups (in Alcohol Literacy, for instance), and supported a number of projects and research proposals.

This past year has been particularly productive with a number of achievements: initiating and editing a special issue on health literacy of the Global Health Promotion journal and other publications, developing and disseminating the IUHPE Position Statement on Health Literacy:  A Practical Vision for a Health Literate World (including with a Brief Report in WHO's Public health panorama),  sponsoring a pre-conference on health literacy at the IUHPE World Conference -   in addition to 3 sub-plenary sessions and dozens of oral presentations,  workshops, symposia, posters -  partnering with the GWG-Salutogenesis and GWG-Healthy Settings for mutual coordination of special sessions in the IUHPE European Region Health Promotion Conference, developing and implementing a new governance strategy and more.

 

Congratulations to all past and present members of the
IUHPE Working Group on Health Literacy!