Health Literacy (HL) is related to capability to access, understand, and utilize health information needed for decisions about our own health. Insufficient HL has been reported in nearly 45% of the European citizens and has been linked to reduced usage of health care services, increased risk of hospitalization and to higher healthcare costs. Clients with lower HL require individual therapeutic and communication approach from the health care specialists, and particulary from the physiotherapists, who have an expanding role in the global health work due to  their broad scope of practice including delivering health information.

To respond this demand, physiotherapists need to acquire solid HL competencies during their education. The currently offered HL competencies in the physiotherapy (PT) study programs are insufficient to satisfy the clients’ needs. The demand for HL competencies is expected to increase further along with the growing number of elderly population, chronic disease patients and people with migration background.  

In response to these sociodemographic changes, our project aims to develop HL competencies of PT students in the partner higher education institutions, adequate to the needs of the various client groups. Further aim is to enable the PT students to understand their own role and responsibility as patient educator and to increase the HL awareness among students, educational and PT professionals and clients. This can be achieved through building shared knowledge on HL competencies and continuous curricula development work. For this purpose, we create first a HL Framework based on the current state of the art to ensure high standard scientific background for the project outcomes. Second, integrating our specific expertise areas, we develop teaching and training contents to be integrated in the PT courses. Third, we evaluate and disseminate the developed knowledge and results in a HL Handbook suitable for use in health care and education. The project offers an opportunity to the educational and PT professionals and to students to cooperate transnationally utilizing co-design, co-creation and digital methods.

We wish to increase the common awareness and importance of integrating the HL topic in the curricula of health profession educational institutions and believe that this will promote general health.