The document discusses improving health literacy among employees and communities. It notes that 1 in 10 UK citizens have problems understanding basic health information. The annual cost of low health literacy in the US is $7.3 billion. Nearly 1 in 10 EU employees experienced a work-related health problem in 2007. The collaborative venture aims to help businesses understand the value of investing in employee and societal health literacy and developing best practices for doing so.

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Health Literacy
Improving health knowledge among
employees and communities
Presented by:
Elena Bonfiglioli, Microsoft
Cécile Duprez-Naudy, Nestlé
Alexander Roediger, MSD
Kristine Sørensen, University of Maastricht

2. Quizz
Question 1
What is the proportion of UK citizens that don‘t understand
simple health information?
a)1 out of 20
b)1 out of 10
c)1 out of 5
Source: Vector Stock .com Royalty Free pictures http://www.vectorstock.com

3. Quizz
Question 2
What is the annual cost of low health literacy in the US?
a)$730‘000‘000
b)$7‘300‘000‘000
c)$72‘000‘000‘000

4. Quizz
Question 3
How many employees in the EU experienced a work-related
health problem in 2007?
a)1 of 20
b)nearly 1 of 10
c)every second

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Background
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6. What Is Health Literacy?
“Health Literacy is people’s
competencies to access,
understand, appraise and apply
information to make health
decisions in everyday life
throughout the life course. “
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Source: Kalamazoo (03/06/2010), Be aware of food labels (picture); Kickbusch I and Maag D (2008), Health Literacy. In: Kris Heggenhougen and Stella Quah, editors
International Encyclopedia of Public Health, Vol 3. San Diego, pp. 204-211
Sørensen et al. (2010): Health literacy and public health: A review and integration of definitions and
models. BMC Public Health (in review)

7. Health Literacy At Workplace and In
the Community

8. 8
Sørensen et al. (2010): Health literacy and public health: A review and integration of definitions and
models. BMC Public Health (in review)

9. Health Literacy in Europe

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Context and Challenges
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11. Adults whose functional literacy was in the bottom 20% were more
than 1.5 times more likely to visit a physician than adults with higher
functional literacy.
Adults whose functional literacy was in the bottom 20% were likely to
have 3 times as many prescriptions filled as adults with higher
functional literacy.
In the context of nutrition and obesity, low health literacy is
associated with higher body mass index (BMI) in adults.
Basically, people with higher education demonstrate healthier
behaviors, report less chronic illness, feel healthier, and live longer.
Health economists estimate that low health literacy costs the
American healthcare system US$ 73 billion per year.
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Sources: WHO (2004), Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health; University of Maastricht (2010), European Health Literacy survey,
www.inthealth.eu/research/health-literacy-survey/; Friedland RB, O’Neill G (1998), Understanding Health Literacy: New Estimates of the Costs of Inadequate Health Literacy;
Fact Sheet of the National Academy on an Ageing Society; see: http://www.agingsociety.org/agingsociety/publications/fact/fact_low.html
Low Health Literacy Impacts Health
And Costs

12. Challenges
People with inadequate health literacy are less knowledgeable
about the importance of health. Health literacy, therefore, is key to
make healthy decisions in everyday life and can contribute to better
health and health outcomes at lower cost.
Health literacy activities translated into the business context create
value not only for the employees but also for companies bottom
lines.
Beyond employees, the World Health Organization recognizes that
the private sector has an important part to play not only as
responsible employers but also as advocates for healthy lifestyles in
society.
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Objectives of this
collaborative venture
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14. 14
The aim of this collaborative venture
Help businesses to understand …
• That investment in health of employees and society is investment in
business
• That employees’ health literacy is key for successful health
programs at workplace
• That companies, beyond their employees, have a role to play in
building healthier societies
• That technology and social networking can help raise the level of
health awareness, ability and literacy of employees, society and
young generation towards a healthier lifestyle for all

15. Planned outputs
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Targeted at employees:
• Build on the work of the Wellbeing in the Workplace Laboratory, with
increased focus on Health Literacy
• 2-3 best-practice sharing sessions aimed at deepening aspects related
to employees’ health literacy
• Engage in an active dialogue with key stakeholders with a series of
thematic workshop over two years (themes to be developed) with the
objective to share best-practices and discuss the best tools and
methodologies to improve and accelerate European citizens’ health
literacy.
• Collection of best practices, case studies, innovative technologies and
recommendations

16. Planned outputs
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Targeted at civil society/communities:
• Collection of best practices, case studies, innovative technologies
and recommendations to ease the implementation of efficient health
literacy programs targeted at communities.
• Organization of multi-stakeholder thematic workshops on public-
private health literacy partnerships (themes to be developed) over 2
years

17. Common and Final output
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Collect best practices, case-studies, tools and recommendations
and develop a “Blueprint for Business Action in Health Literacy”
for CSR Europe membership and beyond, with a view to ease the
implementation of Health Literacy programs towards employees
and beyond to specific target audiences.

18. Workplan 2011
Nov Feb Apr June Aug Oct Dec
2011
Best-practice
session
ExternalCV level
Next CV meeting 10th
November
Best-practice
session
Best-practice
session
Develop workplan,
organize sessions
Identify needs, collect best practices, draft blueprint
Identify and exchange with external stakeholders
Multi-stakeholder
WS
Multi-stakeholder
WS
Multi-stakeholder
WS
2012

19. The Answers
Question 1
What is the proportion of UK citizens that have problems with basic skills
needed to understand simple information that could lead to better health?
a) 1 out of 10 b) 1 out of 20 c) 1 out of 5
Question 3
How many employees in the EU experienced a work-related health problem in
2007?
a) 1 of 20 b) nearly 1 of 10 c) every second
Question 2
What is the annual cost of low health literacy in the US?
a) $730‘000‘000 b) $7‘300‘000‘000 c) $72‘000‘000‘000

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Questions & Answers
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Questions and Answers

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Contact details of leaders
Alexander Roediger (MSD)
alexander_roediger@merck.com ; +32 2 776 62 47
Cécile Duprez-Naudy (Nestlé)
Cecile.DuprezNaudy@nestle.com ; + 41 21 924 29 48
Kristine Sorensen (University of Maastricht,
Dept. of International Health)
K.Sorensen@maastrichtuniversity.nl ;+31 43 388 1717
Elena Bonfiglioli (Microsoft)
elenab@microsoft.com ; +32 2 704 3910