The National Social Marketing Centre is developing a programme of research on health literacy in partnership with the Department of Health in England. This page sets out the rationale for the research programme, outlines the programe’s aims, and describes the approaches that will be taken.

Health literacy – a matter of definition

The term ‘health literacy’ has been in currency in the health field for more than 30 years. Over that period its meaning has evolved to reflect emerging debates about what health is, how it is produced and how it may be improved.

The NSM Centre’s vision of health literacy is that it is part of a set of ideas that considers the interests of the citizen to be paramount, that empowers consumers and that enables ordinary people to take greater control over the factors that influence their health and well being. Good health literacy is, in our view, essential for both individuals and society.

The development of the idea

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s - especially in the US and developing countries - health literacy was thought of as part of biomedical understanding of health. According to this logic, health was viewed narrowly as the absence of illness, and responsibility for health was considered to lie with the individual. Whether people chose to behave healthily or not was largely a matter of personal choice. The role of governments, and of health professionals, was to provide people with the information on which to make behavioural choices, such as whether they smoked or ate healthily or took physical activity, and to encourage them to behave healthily.

Functional health literacy, involving the basic skills of reading, writing and numeracy, was linked to this view of health. A certain level of health literacy was required in order for patients to comprehend information about how to take medication and to act on information to adopt healthy behaviours.