Background:

Health Literacy is an important driver of health inequalities for Aboriginal populations. ‘Health literacy’ is a term used to describe “how patients obtain, read, understand and use healthcare information”.  Health professionals and services are critical to developing the heath literacy knowledge of patients by ensuring patients are able to obtain, read and understand health information.  

Methods:

In 2009, the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service (VAHS) together with the University of Melbourne joined a collaborative project that brought together researchers from International Universities and Indigenous Health services in an effort to address health literacy. Under the leadership of Indigenous Chief Investigators Sue Crengle (New Zealand), Ian Anderson (Australia)and Janet Smylie (Canada) the project saw the development and evaluation of a program to improve health literacy. The program focused on cardiovascular disease (CVD) medications and involved Aboriginal research workers based at an Aboriginal community controlled health organisation being trained in health literacy and then conducting three structured sessions with patients. A project specific computer App and booklet supplemented these sessions.

Results/Discussions:

 From April to December, 38 patients aged 39-78years taking CVD medications for management and prevention participated in the project. Findings revealed low baseline knowledge about medications, particularly about instructions, side effects and treatment targets. Post intervention data revealed significant improvements in patient knowledge and in health literacy practices.

Conclusions/implications:These findings suggest that interventions like this that operate at the patient-health professional interface help build the health literacy skills of health professionals and in turn Aboriginal patients