{"id":7048,"date":"2024-01-05T10:30:06","date_gmt":"2024-01-05T10:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ourdorset.org.uk\/inequalities\/?page_id=7048"},"modified":"2025-04-04T09:40:11","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T08:40:11","slug":"hl-programme","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ourdorset.org.uk\/inequalities\/health-literacy\/hl-programme\/","title":{"rendered":"Overview of our programme"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Health literacy is an individual’s ability to find, understand, and act on health information and services. Lower levels of health literacy can lead to patients not understanding crucial information about their health, which contributes to health inequalities.<\/p>\n

Healthcare providers, councils, voluntary sector groups, and others play a vital role in equitably enabling people to access, understand, and act on health information. The degree to which organisations achieve this is known as their ‘organisational health literacy.’<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Our aim:
\n<\/b><\/span>To increase the number of people and organisations in Dorset\u2019s health and care system\u00a0 that equitably enable people to find, understand and act on health related information. Our objectives we to:<\/p>\n

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  1. Increase awareness of health literacy.<\/li>\n
  2. Increase people\u2019s ability to act to address low health literacy.<\/li>\n
  3. Identify options for increasing the scale and impact of work to address low health literacy in Dorset.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Over the past 18 months, we have been collaborating with partners across various organisations in Dorset to support them in becoming more health literate. With funding from NHS Dorset, we commissioned support from Dr Mike Oliver at Health Literacy Matters UK. With Mike’s help, we have:<\/p>\n