Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to improve health literacy for (a) the working-age population and (b) healthcare professionals.

Public Health England, Health Education England, NHS England and Community Health and Learning Foundation, are working together to develop, test and implement a range of strategic and practical interventions towards improving health literacy.

This includes the Health Literacy toolkit which provides resources to raise awareness of health literacy and upskill the health, care and wider public health workforce. The toolkit sets out the case for investment in health literacy interventions; describes practical tools and techniques that practitioners in a variety of settings can implement to enhance approaches and practice for those with low levels of health literacy and outlines case studies that demonstrate the impact on both practitioners and patients. The toolkit is available to view at the following link:

https://www.hee.nhs.uk/our-work/health-literacy