Health Literacy on the Public Agenda | EHLC 2014

Developing our understanding of health literacy is becoming a growing concern for clinicians, managers of health programmes, and researchers. What was a new concept to operationalize one’s capacity in accessing, managing, and using information to pursue good health has soon become a public health issue on an international scale. Health literacy – as a research field and as a public health concern – is finding its place in public policy agendas. This has only become a reality thanks to the mobilization and work of various groups of actors interacting within the field of public health and medicine.

My study draws from theories employed by social scientists to investigate how a social issue is drafted onto the public agenda and how the views of groups of actors contribute to shaping their contribution to the definition and advancement of health literacy.

For a researcher in public administration, to be aware of the factors that allow the emergence of a social problem is necessary to understand the political, social, and economic realities faced by governments, private sector, and civil society. These realities shape how successful public health advocates will be at translating theory and research into public action and strategies.

I will be presenting my conceptual framework and the first results of my analysis at the European Health Literacy Conference in Aarhus, Denmark, on April 10-11, 2014.