Health literacy toolbox lesson plans

• Health Literacy can be defined as the ability to access, understand, evaluate, and communicate information as a way to promote, maintain and improve health in a variety of settings across the life-course (Canadian Public Health Association, 2008).
• The Canadian Council on Learning (2007) reports that sixty-percent of Canadians lack the skills necessary to manage their health adequately.
• Newcomers to Canada face even greater challenges (Canadian Public Health Association, 2008).
• As clinicians, we are trained to manage our patients’ acute and chronic medical conditions. However, we are not equipped to assess and promote health literacy and settlement in clinical practice.
• Health Literacy tools are needed to assess and promote print literacy, oral literacy, and numeracy skills as part of primary care in refugee health.
• (more: Introduction)

Settlement Stamps Guide:

Settlement stamps can be used at each primary care encounter to assist with the assessment of health literacy and overall settlement. 

Calendar Individual Lesson Plan:

A step-by-step lesson plan to assess and promote calendar literacy.

Medication List Individual Lesson Plan:

A step-by-step lesson plan to assess and promote medication knowledge and adherance. 

Business Card Holder Guide for Use:

Tips for using a business card holder to assess and promote patient self-management of their health care and settlement needs. 

Health Literacy Toolbox Lesson Plans by Lynn Farrales is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The above lesson plans were created to share one approach for using the tools. They are a work in progress and meant to be modified as needed for different contexts, while maintaining respect for patient preference, choice and input. They have not yet been validated.