The educational framework of IMPACCT aims to enable undergraduate medical and nursing students to develop their health literacy capacities, to be able to deliver more patient-centred prevention, treatment or care to patients, particularly to older patients with low health literacy. The framework is also applicable to undergraduate students on other health professional programmes, and can be used with qualified health professionals in continuing professional development.
The over-arching educational framework includes five main learning objectives:
- Strengthening support by communities, families or peers
- Empowering people with low health literacy
- Promoting person-centred interaction
- Strengthening leadership and collaboration capacities of health care professionals
- Reducing communication barriers in health care organizations.
More detail is provided in the figure below
These five main learning objectives can be achieved via three avenues of education, depending on users’ needs. These include:
- Health literacy overview and foundation (for those who want to start health literacy education from the beginning)
- Advanced learning units (for those who want to select one of our 15 learning units, each with 1 ECT)
- Teaching elements of learning units (for those who want to pick and choose educational activities that can be used on their own outside of the full learning unit, and that are of particular interest for users).
The learning units and their elements are described in more detail under the relevant links.
Table 1. Available educational material and options depending on user needs.
Overview of the learning units
The health literacy learning units form the core components of the IMPACCT Health Literacy Educational Programme. There are 15 learning units with each learning unit credited with European Credit Transfers (ECTS); at least 1 ECT per learning unit (equivalent to 28 hours of total study time). Each learning unit has specific learning objectives, with information on content, teaching format, assessment and evaluation tools. Each learning unit relates to one of the five main learning objectives or themes of the educational framework. The learning units are structured to build students’ knowledge and competency in health literacy. The learning units work in synergy and reflect the need for a comprehensive approach to tackle low health literacy with older adults. The topics of the 15 learning units are presented below by theme.
Further information on the development of the programme, the curriculum, implementation and evaluation can be found in the programme manual based on the four categories identified by Stabback for judging curriculum quality (2016). The manual will assist you in choosing the most relevant and appropriate content to implement which best meets your needs.
You can register at <link> which will give you access to programme manual and the full set of learning materials contained with the curriculum.