TY - JOUR

T1 - Organizational Health Literacy in Schools

T2 - Concept Development for Health-Literate Schools

AU - Kirchhoff, Sandra

AU - Dadaczynski, Kevin

AU - Pelikan, Jürgen M.

AU - Zelinka-Roitner, Inge

AU - Dietscher, Christina

AU - Bittlingmayer, Uwe H.

AU - Okan, Orkan

N1 - Funding Information: This research was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Health, grant numbers 2519 FSB 006 and 2522 FSB 006. We acknowledge financial support from the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Open Access Publication Fund of the Technical University of Munich. We would like to thank the project partners and the advisory board as well as the practice partners and schools that have supported the project since 2019, as well as the Alliance Health Literacy in Schools, which was launched as part of the project in 2021. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 by the authors.

PY - 2022/7/20

Y1 - 2022/7/20

N2 - (1) Background: Health literacy is considered a personal asset, important for meeting health-related challenges of the 21st century. Measures for assisting students' health literacy development and improving health outcomes can be implemented in the school setting. First, this is achieved by providing students with learning opportunities to foster their personal health literacy, thus supporting behavior change. Second, it is achieved by measures at the organizational level promoting social change within the proximal and distal environment and supporting the school in becoming more health-literate. The latter approach is rooted in the concept of organizational health literacy, which comprises a settings-based approach aiming at changing organizational conditions to enhance health literacy of relevant stakeholders. The HeLit-Schools project aims to develop the concept of health-literate schools, describing aspects that need to be addressed for a school to become a health-literate organization. (2) Method: The concept development builds on existing concepts of organizational health literacy and its adaptation to the school setting. (3) Results: The adaptation results in the HeLit-Schools concept describing a health-literate school with eight standards. Each standard depicts an area within the school organization that can be developed for fostering health literacy of school-related persons. (4) Conclusions: The HeLit-Schools concept offers an approach to organizational development for sustainably strengthening health literacy.

AB - (1) Background: Health literacy is considered a personal asset, important for meeting health-related challenges of the 21st century. Measures for assisting students' health literacy development and improving health outcomes can be implemented in the school setting. First, this is achieved by providing students with learning opportunities to foster their personal health literacy, thus supporting behavior change. Second, it is achieved by measures at the organizational level promoting social change within the proximal and distal environment and supporting the school in becoming more health-literate. The latter approach is rooted in the concept of organizational health literacy, which comprises a settings-based approach aiming at changing organizational conditions to enhance health literacy of relevant stakeholders. The HeLit-Schools project aims to develop the concept of health-literate schools, describing aspects that need to be addressed for a school to become a health-literate organization. (2) Method: The concept development builds on existing concepts of organizational health literacy and its adaptation to the school setting. (3) Results: The adaptation results in the HeLit-Schools concept describing a health-literate school with eight standards. Each standard depicts an area within the school organization that can be developed for fostering health literacy of school-related persons. (4) Conclusions: The HeLit-Schools concept offers an approach to organizational development for sustainably strengthening health literacy.

KW - health literacy

KW - health promotion

KW - health-literate school

KW - organizational development

KW - organizational health literacy

KW - Health sciences

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85135136483&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/33a66b24-439c-3001-b9a3-feb8e435e8a7/

U2 - 10.3390/ijerph19148795

DO - 10.3390/ijerph19148795

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 35886647

AN - SCOPUS:85135136483

VL - 19

JO - International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

JF - International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

SN - 1661-7827

IS - 14

M1 - 8795

ER -