Study on sound evidence for a better understanding of health literacy in the European Union : final report

This report describes the results of the HEALIT4EU project, the study into sound evidence for a better understanding of health literacy in the European Union. The HEALIT4EU project consisted of three Work Packages: (WP1) a systematic analysis of existing knowledge about health literacy interventions in EU Member States; (WP2) a mapping of policies and actions aimed at improving health literacy in EU Member States and (WP3) establishing a prediction model of determinants of health literacy using publicly available information sources. Overall we can conclude from the HEALIT4EU project that health literacy is a theme that has received growing attention in most of the EU Member States in recent years. This is visible in the rapidly increasing number of policies, programmes and interventions that we have identified in this study. Furthermore we have constructed prediction models that can satisfactorily predict health literacy levels within countries. However, in many countries the efforts are not coordinated through a national (or regional/local) policy. Since many activities are aimed at problem definition and agenda setting, evaluation had not yet been a major topic in most of the programmes. Both on policy as on programme and activity level, evaluation and monitoring is an important gap.