HEALTHLI BUURTKOMPAS
Strengthening community-based health literacy
From until
What
The HealthLi Neighborhood Compass project has developed a methodology to strengthen health literacy in a neighborhood-based manner in a primary care zone.
The name HealthLi Buurtkompas refers to Health Literacy, which stands for health skills. These are skills to find, understand, assess and apply health information in one's own life.
First line?
The “first line” is the local care and social workers who are closest to the person with a care or support need. The primary care zone is then formed by all partners from the healthcare and welfare landscape within a demarcated area that consists of one or more municipalities and is managed by a healthcare council.
In this way, the work of local authorities and healthcare and care providers can be better coordinated. In this way, the primary care zone ensures that the citizen is central, that care remains effective and high-quality and is very accessible.
Goal
The HealthLi Neighborhood Compass has been gradually developed, applied and evaluated as a methodology in collaboration with Pallieterland primary care zone and their partners (local authorities, healthcare, welfare, people with support needs). It includes two parts:
- A 'health literacy' environmental analysis to identify locally vulnerable groups and their needs.
- A co-creative process to develop a support package for a chosen target group around a specific theme.
Based on the environmental analysis, the Pallieterland primary care zone chose to create a support package around loneliness among young adults with psychological vulnerability. During the co-creation process, there was a particular need to 'make help and guidance more known and accessible'. This is how the idea arose to create a guide to provide guidance on the complete range of assistance available. It soon became apparent that the target group of our guide could be expanded to include all young adults and possibly all ages.
During the co-creation, the idea of tackling loneliness together also grew. This resulted in three guides TOGETHER AGAINST LONELINESS: not only a guide for residents, but also a guide for first-line care providers and a guide for local authorities and organizations. While in the guide for residents we point the way to help and guidance, in the guide for care providers we provide tips on how to discuss loneliness and make referrals where necessary. With their guide, organizations and local authorities gain more insight into what they can do to tackle loneliness.
Relevance
More than 40% of Belgians do not have enough health skills to live a healthy life. (CM, 2014) The reform of primary care (VAGZ, 2017) places the person with a care and support need at the center and strives to let that person take matters into their own hands as much as possible. To do this, that person needs strong health skills and the existing healthcare offering must therefore use clearer and clearer language.
Care communication must be tailored to the person with a care and support need and organized based on his or her needs. (Haesaert, 2016) Neighborhood-oriented care, proactive action and accessible communication are essential. Many healthcare and welfare professionals do not yet know health skills well enough because there is insufficient attention to it in healthcare, disease prevention and health promotion. (Haesaert, 2016)
Our role
The methodology was developed step by step in collaboration with and tested in the Pallieterland primary care zone (ELZP). The Thomas More University of Applied Sciences is responsible for guidance, development and evaluation. The Mobilab & Care research center took on the coordinating role. Two expertise cells from Thomas More worked together on this project, namely Mobilab & Care and Creative and Innovative Business.
Results
- The guides ‘Together against loneliness’ have been further developed and are widely used in the Pallieterland primary care zone. The board of the Pallieterland primary care zone will draw up a plan to put the guides into use in the region and update them regularly.
- You can purchase the book with the HealthLi Neighborhood Compass methodology that we rolled out during the project at Politeia.
- We are considering offering of training for primary care zones.
We developed three ‘Together against loneliness’ guides. You can request these guides here:
- Guide for residents
- Guide for first-line care providers
- Guide for local authorities and organizations
The guides are anonymized: we have removed local data from Pallieterland. But other primary care zones can easily get started with them by adding the contact details of their own region. So you can copy, supplement, and adapt these guides to the needs and wishes of your own region. We do ask you to refer to the original copy with the following statement:
“Together against Loneliness Guide for [target group] by Thomas More University of Applied Sciences, in collaboration with the Pallieterland primary care zone, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.”
You can find the terms of this license here.
The guides contain many references to websites and organizations. There is a risk that these may quickly become out of date. If you notice that a link is no longer working or there is an error, please let us know.
Researchers
Karolien Baldewijns
Committed researcher who enjoys exploring new paths and has a passion for empowerment.
Supported by
