Health Literacy Development for Systems and Service Improvement

A 2-day masterclass led by globally recognised health literacy developers and founder of the Ophelia (Optimising Health Literacy and Access) process Distinguished Professor Richard Osborne, and Senior Research Fellow Dr Melanie Hawkins. 

This masterclass is for health professionals, health planners, policy makers, researchers, managers, executives and those active in community services, including refugee services.

This Master Class will include:

• Demonstration of how to build fit-forpurpose interventions to reduce inequity in health service access and engagement.
• Training in Ophelia process for identifying and responding to community needs.
• www.healthliteracydevelopment.com.
• Training in health literacy measurement, including the HLQ data in the ABS National Survey, as well as qualitative approaches.
• How to build effective interventions for equitable implementation, sustainability and scale-up including among those who may experience marginalisation and stigma.
• A focus on health literacy and refugees.

Learning outcomes

Participants will be able to:

1. Explain how health literacy development can lead to enabling environments for improved health access, equity, and health outcomes.
2. Identify health literacy strengths and challenges using the Ophelia process. 
3. Apply the Ophelia process to design, implement and evaluate actions for effective uptake and sustainability of health programs.
4. Integrate Ophelia into your organisation to support sustainable community health literacy development.

The Centre for Global Health and Equity

The Centre for Global Health and Equity team has developed the widely used HLQ (Health Literacy Questionnaire), eHLQ, Ophelia and other clinical, co-design tools to ensure implementation success even among groups who experience marginialisation. 

• Melanie and Richard co-lead the EU Commission Joint Action on Heart Disease and Diabetes WP5 (Health Literacy) work package which is implementing Ophelia in 13 EU countries across 24 projects. 

WHO Health Literacy Development for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable disease (WHO 2022) provides this definition of health literacy: 

“Health Literacy Development refers to the ways in which health workers, services, systems, organisations and policymakers build the knowledge, confidence and comfort of individuals, families, groups and communities. Enabling environments support people to access, understand, appraise, remember and use information for the health and well-being of themselves and those around them.”

- The 2022 WHO Report on Health Literacy Development was a collaboration between the Centre for Global Health and Equity and the WHO.

Richard Osbourne, BSc, PhD

Distinguished Professor of Health Sciences, Director, Centre for Global Health and Equity, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia;
NHMRC Investigator Fellow L3 (2024- 2029); Honorary Professor of Health Literacy, University of Copenhagen, Denmark; and Prof (Hon), NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal 

Richard is a dynamic and engaging workshop leader who brings practical experience from 20 years of research and practice that has directly impacted public health and clinical practice, as well as health policy in many countries. 

Melanie Hawkins

Dr Melanie Hawkins, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Global Health and Equity, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

Melanie brings 20 years of experience to her work in health literacy intervention co-design, qualitative health services research, health program evaluation, and questionnaire development. With a strong interest in what questionnaire data mean in different contexts, she has become known internationally for her work in measurement validation theory and methodology. Melanie conducts Ophelia training nationally and internationally.