Centre for Prevention and Intervention in Childhood and Adolescence (CPI)

Health Literacy

Current Health Literacy (HL) concepts no longer limit conceptual understanding to knowledge and functional literacy and numeracy, but include other skills related to access, assessment and use of health-related information. This understanding also explicitly addresses the patterns of perception, thought and action underlying these skills. Studies consistently prove the health relevance of HL, e.g. for the use of preventive and curative services. The childhood and youth phase is of central importance for health development and for the sustainability of prevention and health promotion services. However, the findings show that children and adolescents have not yet been sufficiently addressed.

HLCA-research association

The BMBF-funded joint project "Health Literacy in Childhood and Adolescence (HLCA) as a Goal of Health Promotion and Primary Prevention" will work out this desideratum from March 2015 to February 2018 both theoretically and empirically multidisciplinarily and internationally. HL Basic Research (AB1), Mental-HL (AB2) and eHL (AB3) will be researched in three work blocks (AB), each consisting of three subprojects. The focus is on the development of a theoretical framework for the promotion of HL in childhood and adolescence. Furthermore, the development, testing and evaluation of measures for the promotion of HL as well as prevention and health promotion using the example of mental HL and eHL will be the focus. The network will also develop, test and validate methods for recording HL in children and adolescents. Both quantitative and qualitative methods and materials will be used..

The HLCA network will promote the development, testing and practical transfer of need-specific health promotion and primary prevention measures through the theoretical conceptualization of the HL concept for the target group "children and adolescents".