2018 Health Literacy Course

Almost 60 percent of Australians don’t know how to find, understand and use information about their health and health care.

This knowledge deficit creates poor health outcomes and has made health literacy a national policy priority. Health literacy practice in organisations can dramatically improve health outcomes, particularly for the most marginalised population groups. As a result, many Australian organisations are now looking for ways to improve their health literacy practices.

The 4-day Health Literacy Course delivered by The Centre for Culture, Ethnicity and Health (CEH) offers organisations the tools and knowledge to build their health literacy practice.

The course takes place in an innovative, supportive learning environment. Participants learn practical ways to improve health literacy at an organisational, systems and practitioner level. They undertake projects that activate knowledge and benefit their organisations. Over the past four years, CEH has delivered the course 11 times. Organisations from the health, local government and human services sectors across Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory have participated.

Course participants are from a broad range of disciplines including communications, education, management, medical, nursing, allied health and health promotion. This allows participants to benefit from exploring health literacy from a multi-disciplinary perspective.

How organisations participate in the course

2016 Eastern Health Literacy Course Highlights Video

Take a look inside a CEH Health Literacy Course in this great 4-minute video. Hear about participants' experiences of the course and get a glimpse of the activities and interactions that make it so successful. This video shows highlights from a course run in collaboration with the Inner East Primary Care Partnership and Outer East Health and Community Alliance. The video was made by those two organisations.

Course requirements:

This course aims to improve both individual and organisational health literacy practice. Our experience of running this course in the past 5 years suggests that maximum benefit is derived when the following requirements are met.

We strongly recommend two participants or more take part from each organisation. This allows participants to support one another in the course, with small projects and within their organisation. It also minimises loss of organisational health literacy knowledge due to staff turnover.

In-principle support from participants’ line managers that they will be:

released to participate in the workshops

given sufficient time to undertake the small projects.

Executive approval of application and commitment to attend executive forum. On day 4 of the course (13 November 2018, 9am-12pm). The executive forum relates to strategic and policy-level implementation of health literacy initiatives and acts as a showcase for participants’ short projects.

Application Process

CEH course coordinator will respond to you and will send you an application form.

Get in-principle support sign-off from both participants’ line managers

Get Executive level approval of application and commitment to attend Executive Forum on the 13 November 2018 between 9am and 12pm

Return the completed application form by Friday 16 March, 2018.

Delivery Mode

Course :

Date & Time

No dates are set for this course

Price

$1,480.00

Structure

0 : The course consists of 4 Modules delivered over 8 months.
Each Module consists of a full-day workshop and related activities such as pre-reading and project work. Participants undertake two small projects during the course. These take place after workshop one and two. A short Executive Forum is held on Day 4 of the course to promotes Executive-level commitment. For more details please refer to the information above.

Modules

0 : Module one: Health literacy and communication
Module one introduces key principles and concepts of health literacy. It also focuses on strategies to review communication practices and tools to check client understanding of health information.

Learning outcomes
On completion of this module participants will be able to:
- Define health literacy and outline its key principles and the current policy environment
- Outline the relationship between health literacy, cultural competence and consumer participation.
- Apply techniques to improve practitioner/client communication

Post-training project
Within their organisations, participants design and implement a small project relating to communication.

Post-training project
Within their organisations, participants develop and implement a project to embed health literacy strategies into systems and operations.

Module three: Building health literacy capacity
Building on the knowledge of the first two modules, participants learn how to lead health literacy change within their organisations, and build the capacity of the workforce to implement health literacy techniques and strategies.

Learning outcomes
On completion of this module participants will be able to:
- Understand the role of capacity building, the challenges and rewards
- Act as a health literacy change agent and establish mechanisms to support systemic and practice change
- Deliver targeted health literacy training

Module four: Executive Forum & building on the knowledge
Participants share health literacy projects and network with executives through fun, facilitated activities while extending their knowledge through keynote speeches. After the forum, participants review the latest research, policy and practice development and explore consumer participation. The day finishes with reflection activities and a celebration.