The role of self-help groups and self-help organisations in promoting health literacy in the public

摘要

Health literacy has recently been put on the health policy agenda in Germany, triggered by several recent studies that show that more than half of the German population has difficulties in finding, understanding, appraising and applying health information. Respective statistics reflect these individual difficulties and point at user preferences and competencies being inadequately considered and responded to by the healthcare system. Among other measures to improve this situation, anational action plan on health literacy was launched in 2018, which explicitly addresses self-help groups and self-help organisations repeatedly as an important player in promoting health literacy on individual and organisational levels.This article discusses the relevance of the underlying and guiding concept of empowerment in mutual self-help and concludes that fostering health literacy was and still is acornerstone in health-related self-help from the very beginning - just without using this term. Based on results from surveys, we show how those participating members of self-help groups increase their health literacy, and how educative, supportive and advisory tasks for self-help groups and organisations emerge from these developments. Thereupon, the specific role of mutual self-help becomes evident for, specifically, the individual daily life dimensions of health literacy.