Health Literacy in Schools

Skill development starts early in life and therefore the school setting and the whole educational sector are core contexts to foster health literacy promotion in children, adolescents and young people. In addition, health literacy is also an important issue for educational professions who act as agents for information provision and role models, such as teachers, educational staff and school health professionals. Based on their responsibility for all school matters, school principals should also be addressed to ensure that health literacy is embedded in the organizational context (i.e. as part of a whole-school approach to health). The aim of this interest group is to collaborate about health literacy in schools and launch a global discussion on available school programs and evidence on health literacy interventions in schools, the readiness of the education sector for targeting health literacy in schools and classrooms, new strategies needed for the inclusion of health literacy into whole school approaches to health promotion (i.e. Health Promoting Schools as favoured by WHO, the Schools for Health in Europe (SHE) network and the International School Health Network), the role of technology and new learning environments and teaching methods in education associated with digital change, education policies supporting the uptake of individual and organizational health literacy by schools, and more issues that matter in context of health literacy in schools.