Helle Therkildsen Maindal

Professor, Department of Public Health, Aarhus University

Organisational health literacy; a way to work with health equity?

Short description

Organizational health literacy refers to how services, organizations, and systems make health information and resources accessible to people based on their varying health literacy levels.

A health literate healthcare organization …

makes it easier for all stakeholders (patients/relatives, staff/leadership and citizens) to access, understand, appraise and apply disease- and health-relevant information, and …
aims to improve personal health literacy for judgement and decisions in everyday life concerning healthcare, prevention and health promotion.

The talk introduces theory and empirical research on health literacy and health literacy responsiveness in organizations, as well as practical approaches to working with the concept.

CV

Professor Helle Terkildsen Maindal, from the Department of Public Health at Aarhus University, Denmark, is an internationally recognized expert in health promotion and health literacy.

Her main research interest is building capacity for health-promoting environments. She has been the primary Investigator of several intervention studies within public health, especially those related to family life transitions.