Key Messages

• Poor health literacy is detrimental to health across the life course and up to 47% of the European population are thought to have poor or inadequate levels of health literacy.
• Effective health literacy interventions can positively influence education and academic performance, which can have long-term benefits across the life course.
• It is important to develop health literacy skills early in life. The promotion of health literacy for children and young people will typically be delivered outside the health sector, often in the education sector.
• Embedding health literacy within routine educational activities, aids implementation and additional costs may be considered a reasonable investment if the needs of the educational sector are also met.
• Having better evidence on effectiveness and economic benefits to other sectors can facilitate implementation by increasing the potential for buy-in by stakeholders:
  • ○ economic modelling can be used to make estimates of long-term costs and benefits as there are potential cost savings for the whole of society;
  • ○ the routine collection of data on education and health outcomes can also be used to look at the impact of initiatives over time;
  • ○ it is also important to take account of the differing delivery contexts when considering potential outcomes and challenges in implementation.
• Improved health and educational outcomes in school increase the potential for greater economic benefits for children when they reach adulthood as a result of enhanced career opportunities as well as better physical and emotional health, and these effects can be passed down to future generations.

Contents

• Acronyms
• Executive Summary
• Policy Brief
  • Introduction
  • Approach to synthesizing the evidence
  • What do we mean by health literacy?
  • How can early years and education services help facilitate the acquisition of health literacy skills?
  • What do we know about co-benefits from health literacy programmes that are delivered to children and young adults?
  • Health Promoting Schools and educational outcomes
  • Impacts on education outcomes of health literacy programmes delivered to pre-school aged children
  • Impacts on education of health literacy programmes delivered to young people outside of school
  • Linking effective health literacy interventions to better health and educational outcomes
  • What do we know about economic impacts of co-benefits from health literacy programmes delivered to children and young people?
  • Making use of literature on the short- and long-term economic co-benefits of better educational outcomes
  • How can health literacy interventions be better facilitated?
  • Conclusions
• Acknowledgements
• References
• Joint Policy Briefs

The authors and editors are grateful to the reviewers who commented on this publication and contributed their expertise.

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What is a Policy Brief?