Tag: health information

Understanding and supporting health literacy

July 23, 2022

Health literacy is important when accessing, understanding and using health information, participating in health decisions, and achieving better health (Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, 2014). Health literacy issues arise when a person’s knowledge, skills and capacity to understand health information clash with demands of healthcare...

I am a speech pathologist with longstanding experience supporting people with lifelong disability, communication disability, and dysphagia. I have many years of industry experience as a senior clinician in the former NSW Department of Ageing Disability and Home Care, and most recently an Associate Lecturer of Speech Pathology at The University of Sydney and The University of Technology Sydney (UTS). I am now working in the Department of Education Tasmania and pursuing my PhD at UTS. I will be exploring the accessibility of written health information for people with communication disability. I have a strong person-centred and rights-based approach to my work, which also recognises the important overlap between ‘disability’ and ‘health’.