Assessing Health Literacy and Health-Seeking Behaviour in Men – Challenges and Opportunities for Global Health Initiatives

Assessing Health Literacy and Health-Seeking Behaviour in Men – Challenges and Opportunities for Global Health Initiatives

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

11^th February 2020

Scientific committee: Inês Fronteira (coordinator), Maria do Rosário Oliveira Martins, Karina Kielmann

Vennue: Room Cambournac, IHMT – UNL, Lisbon

Short description: Health literacy is the capacity of individuals to access, understand and use health information to improve their health status. It is both an individual and a social asset since communities with higher health literacy rates tend to have better health status, be economically more productive and socially more cohesive.  Health literacy is one component that is likely to drive health-seeking behaviour.  Globally, men tend to engage less with health services than women, are less likely to access preventive services, and are more likely to drop out of care. One reason for this is likely to be poorer levels of health literacy than in women, accounting for inequities both in terms of access, use and outcomes of health care. This is even more evident in resource-constrained countries with fragile health systems. The Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the Institute of Global Health & Development at Queen Margaret University and the Mozambican Institute for Health Education and Research will bring together a group of national and international experts to discuss health literacy in the context of global health, with a specific focus on men in sub-Saharan Africa.