Why teach health literacy? Even before the pandemic, health organisations were publishing articles to help readers identify fake health news. Dr Vaughan Cruickshank and Dr Rosie Nash of the University of Tasmania ask what this means for schools. A person’s ability to recognise reputable, accurate health information is part of their health literacy. It is also included in school curriculums: it is defined within the Australian Health and Physical Education curriculum (AC:HPE) as an “individual’s ability to gain access to, understand and use health information and services in ways that promote and maintain health and wellbeing”. (Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority (ACARA), 2020, p.8). Health literacy is essential to making critical decisions in health-related situations. There is a positive relationship between health literacy, health behaviours and health outcomes, and low health literacy is associated with poorer health (Mõttus et al., 2014). The World Health Organization has positioned health literacy as a key strategy to addressing health inequalities and numerous programs have been designed to develop health literacy worldwide (Nash et al., 2021). Teach health literacy to all The AC:HPE is one of few curriculums worldwide that explicitly focuses on fostering health literacy in students. 18 | independent education | issue 2 | Vol 51 | 2021
Health literacy is one of the five ‘key ideas’ that underpinned development of this curriculum (ACARA, 2020). While the inclusion of health literacy in the curriculum points to its importance in contributing to good health outcomes, research (for example, Bröder et al., 2017) indicates that teaching health literacy can be challenging for teachers. Numerous environmental and social factors that can influence students’ health attitudes and behaviours contribute to this challenge. The teenage years are often considered the best time to teach health education and develop health literacy; however, recent research (for example, Hill et al., 2020) indicates that it could be more beneficial for children to develop health literacy in primary school when they are at a more impressionable age. Attitudes and behaviours formed during childhood can influence adult health behaviours (Nash et al, 2020) and primary school classroom teachers are well placed to teach health literacy because of their in-depth knowledge of their students’ lives, needs and abilities. Pilot program HealthLit4Kids (HL4K) is an education package designed at the University of Tasmania for use in schools to raise awareness of health and promote discussions about health
