Lay Community Health Advisors Erasmus Project

Project Title

Lay Community Health Advisors

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

The topic of health concerns both individuals and society as a whole. While everyone wants to be healthy there is a strong connection between income levels and where you live with your health and life expectancy. The rising costs of health care, including for diseases that could actually be prevented or better managed means that societies and economies have an interest in promoting better health. To be and to stay physically and mentally healthy is linked to knowledge about living a healthy life at all stages. Central to achieving this is having access to health care and understanding health information. Health literacy is a basic competence and needs to be recognised as such.

Health literacy is the capacity of people to access, understand and apply information, so that they can make informed choices related to their health. In a Report by the European Health Forum in 2014 an alarming 47% of the population in eight EU Member States were reported to have insufficient levels of health literacy; 43% of adults surveyed had difficulty in grasping the notion of disease prevention and 51% of adults were found to struggle with the concept of health promotion or the ability to advance their own health.

Health literacy levels have an impact on the efficiency of healthcare systems. People that have low health literacy tend to go to the doctor more often, to be hospitalized more often or to take inappropriate treatment or prescriptions. Furthermore, they are less inclined to take preventative measures. Fostering health literacy of all citizens is beneficial for society at large as it reduces costs for public health systems which can, then, work more efficiently for those really in need of care.

Nowadays, the internet provides not only a vast array of health related websites, but increasingly also becomes the first information point for health issues. It eventually leads to self-diagnoses of illnesses and diseases based on this information. However, the information provided in fora and on online consultation websites has to be dealt with carefully, as not all information on diseases, illnesses, their symptoms or their treatment is correct and corresponds to the scientific state of the art in medicine.

There were 4 intellectual outputs completed over the 27 month implementation period as follows:
IO1- a bespoke Lay Family Health Advisor curriculum to train local residents as health literacy tutors
IO2 – an Induction Training Programme to support the delivery of the new Lay Family Health Advisors curriculum
IO3 – a digital toolkit of health literacy resources addressing positive mental health promotion; diet and nutrition and preventative measures for healthy living
IO4 – a suite of online tools and resources to include an e-learning portal and a suite of social media platforms facilitate interaction between the newly trained lay family health advisors

Project Website

https://www.on-call.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 267833 Eur

Project Coordinator

Ballybeen Women’s Centre Ltd & Country: UK

Project Partners

• OSRODEK SZKOLENIOWO-BADAWCZY INNEO
• Hub Karelia Oy
• Ustanova za obrazovanje odraslih Dante
• FUTURE IN PERSPECTIVE LIMITED
• INSTITUTO DE SOLDADURA E QUALIDADE
• Kas Halk Egitimi Merkezi
• AKLUB CENTRUM VZDELAVANI A PORADENSTVI