Guide & videos on health literacy policies

Health literacy policies – how can they be developed and implemented

As health literacy is considered critical to the achievement of health, and limited health literacy is still a widespread phenomenon, the topic is steadily gaining more interest from policy- and decision-makers. To meet the growing demand of decision-makers, a policy guide “Health literacy policies – how can they be developed and implemented?” was initiated to support policy-/decision-makers and administrators in implementing effective policies and actions to improve health literacy of the population on a national level. It is a product of M-POHL, initiated and sponsored by the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health together with WHO/Europe and the Austrian National Public Health Institute.
Countries are invited to contribute to the knowledge transfer by sending a video sharing their national experiences on health literacy policy work and in implementing health interventions The guide and the videos can be found HERE.
 

Using the HLS19 instruments

Are you interested in using the HLS19 instruments?

An agreement for the use of the HLS19 instruments will be granted, if the following conditions are fulfilled:

  1. The use of the tool is non-commercial and in public interest.
  2. Any licensing by third parties is prohibited.
  3. The HLS19 Project must be acknowledged in any publication resulting from the use of the HLS19 instrument as ‘The HLS19 instrument used in this research was developed within “The European Health Literacy Population Survey 2019-2021 (HLS19)” of M-POHL’.
  4. The instruments have to be cited – citation suggestions are provided with the instruments.
  5. A PDF copy of publications resulting from the use of the HLS19 instrument must be provided to the ICC after publication.
  6. Any further translations of the instruments have to be provided to the ICC. The ICC and the HLS19 Consortium can use these translated versions for its further research. Any use of these versions is subject to the same rights and rules apply as to the original HLS19 instruments according to point 1 to 5. Furthermore, the instruments can only be shared with others by a joint agreement between the ICC and the applicant. 

The HLS19 instruments are owned by the HLS19 Consortium. Any use of the HLS19 instruments requires a contractual agreement between the applicant and the HLS19 Consortium. For permission to use the English version of the instruments, the ICC will evaluate the application and decide whether to grant permission. For granting permission for translated versions the respective National Study Centre and the ICC will jointly evaluate the application and decide on giving permission. The use of the instruments is free of charge. A detailed overview of the available translations of the different HLS19 instruments can be found here: 

An application including a contractual agreement with the conditions for using the HLS19 instruments must be submitted. A template for the application and agreement can be found HERE.

Factsheets on the HLS19 instruments including information on psychometric properties can be found here.

Results & publications

Design & methods

Study Design

The HLS19 applied a multi-center cross-sectional study design. The study population was defined as all permanent residents aged 18 and above living in private households in the 17 participating countries. A total of 42,445 interviews were included in the study. National sample sizes were expected to be at least 1,000 but varied from 865 to 5,660 respondents. The participating countries used a multi-stage random sampling procedure or quota sampling, and most countries stratified samples by gender, age group, population density, and geographical areas/regions. Data were collected through face-to-face, telephone, or web-based interviews, or a combination of these. The timeframe for data collection was, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, from November 2019 to June 2021. 

HLS19 instruments

To measure general health literacy, an adapted 47-item instrument, the HLS19-Q47, and two adapted short forms, the HLS19-Q12 and the HLS19-Q16, were developed based on the HLS-EU-Q47 instrument to collect data. Instruments were developed to measure: 

  • Digital health literacy (HLS19-DIGI), 
  • Communicative health literacy with physicians in healthcare HLS19-COM-P-Q11 and HLS19-COM-P-Q6, a short form), 
  • Navigational health literacy (HLS19-NAV), 
  • Vaccination health literacy (HLS19-VAC)

Factsheets on the HLS19 instruments including information on psychometric properties can be found here. 

In addition, 31 core and 18 optional correlates were included in the HLS19 questionnaires. Participating countries had to implement at least the HLS19-Q12 and the 31 core correlates, all other parts were optional.

The HLS19 instruments were developed in English and translated by 16 of the 17 countries into their national language(s) (Ireland used the original English version), resulting in a wide range of languages in which the instruments are now available:  Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Slovenian, and Slovak. In addition, some countries have translated the instruments also into migrant languages. As only the HLS19-Q12 was mandatory, not all instruments are available in all these languages.

A detailed overview of the available translations of the different HLS19 instruments can be found here: 

Subscribe to