Health Literacy and Health Literacy Responsive of Healthcare Professionals, Health workers and students

This research group aims to prepare College of Health and Medicine students to respond to the health literacy needs of the people in their community.

This recently formed group brings together expertise across the College of Health and Medicine to develop and validate a tool to measure the ability of health professionals to respond to the health literacy needs of their  community. We work within an interprofessional framework and support the development of health literacy and health literacy responsiveness across the College to impact the health and health management of Tasmanians and for our global community. We welcome opportunities to collaborate with students and researchers who share the same focus.

Expertise

  • Use of health literacy tools to evaluate student health literacy
  • Curriculum mapping
  • Implementation research
  • Validation and tool development research
  • Health literacy for Health professionals (Physiotherapists)
  • Members of the Health Literacy & Equity Research Group

College Research themes

Excellence in the Scholarship of Learning and Teaching

Flagships

Health Services Research (School of Nursing)

Projects

This group has four planned projects (2022).

1. Validation of a health literacy responsiveness tool for health professionals and health workers and students.

Aims to develop and validate a tool to measure the responsiveness of health workers to the health literacy needs of the people they care for.

2. Assessing changes in health literacy and health literacy responsiveness over time.

Aims to measure longitudinally the health literacy and health literacy responsiveness of students within the College of Health and Medicine

3. Mapping the curricula in courses offered by the  College of Health and Medicine to establish current content and assessment of health literacy and/or health literacy responsiveness. Use this insight to inform a solution to ensure consistent best practice approaches to developing health literacy responsive graduates across the College.

4. Develop a suite of evidence informed resources for all universities to use to embed health literacy responsiveness in their courses.

Group Leader(s)

Dr Marie-Louise Bird

Affiliation

This College-wide project has representation from:

  • The School of Heath Sciences
  • The School of Nursing
  • The School of Medicine
  • The School of Pharmacy and Pharmacology
  • The School of Psychological Sciences
  • The Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre

Contact

Marie-Louise.Bird@utas.edu.au

Group members

Staff members:

  • Dr Derek Choi-Lundberg
  • Ms Tracy Douglas
  • Dr Claire Eccleston
  • Ms Mel Eslick
  • Dr Carey Mather
  • Dr Hazel Maxwell
  • Dr Rosie Nash
  • Mr Jonathon Sward
  • Ms Laura Triffett
  • Dr Matt Palmer
  • Dr Karen Watkins
  • Dr Kath Ogden

Through previous research, members of the group have investigated health literacy and ehealth literacy using a variety of tools and scales. The team is well-placed to expand on this work and investigate health literacy responsiveness.