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Health literacy consulting services

Developing good health literacy practices will help your organisation by making it easier for clients to successfully manage their health needs.  This benefits health organisations and clients alike by:

  • reducing the number of missed appointments
  • reducing the number of return visits
  • enabling better recoveries from illness, injury and other conditions
  • enabling clients to better manage long-term conditions
  • increasing client engagement in health programmes
  • improving quality of care.

Our health literacy specialists understand your challenges and constraints, and are experienced in working alongside health organisations and professionals to identify and resolve heath literacy issues.

Take a look at the services below, to see how we can help.

Health literacy strategy

Taking a strategic approach to health literacy will ensure that clients can easily and successfully engage with your organisation. The first step to developing an effective health literacy strategy involves analysing the health literacy demands and issues at the system, workforce and patient level.

How people enter and navigate your service, and engage with health professionals, affects their ability to manage their health.

We can help you to develop a health literacy strategy, and advise on how to plan and prioritise health literacy solutions that will:

  • build patients’ knowledge and understanding
  • improve patient satisfaction
  • improve patient safety
  • improved quality of care for patients
  • achieve organisational targets and goals
  • improve your systems and processes
  • reduce identified health literacy barriers
  • inform workforce development
  • inform new health initiatives.

Developing resources

Health organisations often rely upon written documents to inform patients about complex health issues. Creating resources (written materials, videos, diagrams) that are clear and properly understood will help you to achieve better patient outcomes.

Most health information and resources are written in plain language but this is not enough in itself.  Developing people’s health literacy skills means resources also have to include activities that build on their existing knowledge by introducing new concepts, vocabulary and information.

Workbase’s health literacy specialists can advise on:

  • how to make information easier to understand
  • how to build health literacy skills using resources
  • effective ways to convey difficult concepts and complex information.

We can also develop new materials, in consultation with the relevant audiences and subject matter experts.

Supporting health literacy research

There is inevitably a health literacy component in research that involves patients. Workbase’s team members are experienced in working with local and international research projects to:

  • provide health literacy advice
  • provide professional support
  • contribute to the research’s design and implementation

Health workforce professional development

Our health literacy professional development seminars and workshops will enable your employees to introduce, effectively communicate, and support clients’ health literacy skill development

We can also develop your managers’ and trainers’ capabilities so that they can train your workforce in-house.

Enhance your workforce’s communication and health literacy skills so they can improve patients’ understanding and ability to better manage their health.

Workbase can deliver employee professional development workshops in-house, or we can train your managers or trainers to deliver them.  The workshops will ensure your employees:

  • understand health literacy
  • identify clients’ existing health literacy skills and knowledge
  • identify clients’ health literacy needs
  • check that clients have understood
  • develop resources to meet clients needs.

Workbase can also show your organisation how it can improve training and induction for staff who may have low health literacy or language skills.

Advice

Workbase can advise on all aspects of health literacy.

Our health literacy specialists have a deep understanding about what drives health literacy development, initiatives and solutions in New Zealand and internationally.  This means we can:

  • provide advice about how health literacy impacts the health system and individuals
  • offer practical solutions that support effective health literacy development.

How we will work with you

Our service promise to you…

When working with you, we will always:

  • ensure we understand your needs
  • take a collaborative approach with you, your staff and your clients
  • look for the most effective ways to deliver results
  • apply robust and strategic analysis
  • deliver agreed outcomes and meet timeframe.

Talk to us about how our team of experienced health literacy consultants can help.

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