Digital Badge: An Introduction to Health Literacy for Health and Social Care Professionals

Digital Badge

Course begins: 8th January 2024

Duration: 10 Week Course 

1 Hour per Week

Topic 1: Module overview and What is Health Literacy?

Topic 2: NALA Online Course – Understanding adult literacy, numeracy and digital literacy

Topic 3: Health literacy research

Topic 4: Measuring health literacy levels – tools used

Topic 5: Techniques to improve health literacy levels: written techniques (style, design, print, pictures)

Topic 6: Techniques to improve health literacy levels: verbal and digital approaches

Topic 7: NALA Online course – Literacy friendly service

Topic 8: Specific disease challenges: the cardiology patient

Topic 9: NALA Workshop – Implementing your learnings in your healthcare setting**

Topic 10: Putting learnings into action and future work 

*Note: If a UCC Staff Member please register using your UCC staff email address. 

Health literacy (HL) is the degree to which individuals have the ability to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health‐related decisions and actions. Low HL levels predispose to poor medication adherence and health outcomes.

Awareness and knowledge of HL amongst healthcare professionals can lead to tailored interventions for improved HL.

This badge is a concise yet rich, evidence‐based exploration of HL for healthcare professionals as a concept to be considered and incorporated into your interactions with patients and caregivers as part of your role as a health or social care professional. It is designed as a baseline HL training for Health and Social Care Professionals and students of those courses, who are currently or will in the future be responsible for the care of patients/carers who may face HL challenges, and need to be supported in the understanding and management of their condition.

Upon completion of the badge you will have a foundational knowledge of a range of topics including what health literacy is, the impact that it has on patient care, the tools used to assess health literacy, and the verbal, written and technological methods of improving health literacy for patients.