Covid-19 Series: Using a Pandemic to Improve Health Literacy

Mary Bussell

Health literacy measures a person’s ability to understand how to achieve and maintain good health. During the covid-19 pandemic, poor health literacy has hindered people’s ability to comprehend and adhere to necessary lockdown measures. Overcoming barriers to understanding, improving access to trustworthy information and challenging misinformation can help individual health decision-making and have incalculable benefits for public health. Policy makers should prioritise improving health literacy to ensure the public are able to make informed health decisions to positively impact wellbeing.

‘Using a Pandemic to Improve Health Literacy’, the second short report in our Covid-19 Series, assesses the benefits of improving health literacy using the example of the reaction to lockdown measures by people over 70. Read the report by clicking the link below.

Read the report

Mary’s career has led to a comprehensive knowledge of the health ecosystem with expertise in building and managing relationships with key stakeholders locally, nationally and globally. She is an advocate for public-private partnerships and using improved understanding of the social determinants of health to create a transformative change in patient-centric care by advancing health and patient engagement through improved health literacy and numeracy.