Annual Report 2024

Activities:

The steering group meets virtually at least 6 times a year. In addition, we meet face-to-face for a planning
away day.

This has been a busy year for HLUK as we have started a transformation programme to become a Social
Enterprise. This was decided during an away day in Glasgow. This is a slow process due to the amount of
paperwork needed; we plan to have this completed by April 2025. Other activities we have successfully
delivered during 2024 are;

• Policy round table involving 20 people from the NHS and academia with an international invited
speaker (Prof Don Nutbeam University of Sydney). Resulting in a slide deck as a platform for policy brief.

• National networking and lobbying with key leads from the NHS England Health Inequalities
Improvement Team and Patient Choice Team to support them to understand why Health Literacy is a key
underpinning for their agendas.

• Delivery of a national policy seminar to emphasise the role that health literacy can play in turning
policy into practice. Key personnel from across the NHS, Academia and the VCSE sector were in
attendance

• Commenced an internal re-organisation to move HLUK from an unincorporated association into a
Social Enterprise

• Pharmacy Schools Programme – training with 35 teachers and over 70 schools signed up to
annual campaign, to promote pharmacy services using a health literacy approach to children aged 4-11
years

• Participated in UK Self-Care Week promoting messages of health literacy

• Department of Health NI presented at the UK Health Literacy policy webinar – Tuesday 29 October

• Re establishment of the Northern Ireland Health Literacy Forum, chaired by Department of Health

• Webinar with Staffordshire Libraries, sited on our website

• Responded to the DHSC consultation on the future of the NHS in England

Future Plans

• Enhance HLUK's profile at a national, regional and local level as the "go to place" for health literacy
expertise

• Continue to provide policy into practice seminars and develop other learning opportunities in order
to emphasise the importance role of health literacy in addressing heath inequalities and ensuring that
community-based provision is targeted at those communities where lower levels of health literacy (and
therefore health inequalities) are prevalent

• Continue to develop national, regional and local networks in order to ensure that policy makers and
senior staff understand the importance of health literacy in meeting key priorities

• Use our new status as a Social Enterprise in order to enable us to seek new sources of funding for
our work

Outcomes from SIG meeting at last SAPC ASM 

We currently have approx.. 1000 members. We have now increased our profile on social media and
manage to post some HL topics regularly.

All members have presented at a number of national and global conferences over the last year and have
abstracts accepted for conferences in 2024.