Significance, strategies, and issues of health literacy development in schools

Abstract

The development of health literacy (hereafter referred to as HL) is required in school health education. The purpose of this study is to clarify the significance, strategies, and issues of developing HL in school health education.

HL refers to the knowledge, motivation and competences to access, understand, appraise, and apply health information including health information services. Analytical materials were selected from articles and books on the definition, content, and development of HL in Japan as well as from review articles on HL development in other countries. In addition, the author referred to the U.S. National Health Education Standards (hereafter referred to as NHES) and a U.S. program for middle and high school students that corresponds to NHES standards. The author also analyzed school health education in Japan, focusing on the goals and contents of “health classes,” and compared the HL-related contents of the Courses of Study in Health and Physical Education for junior high and high schools with those of the NHES and U.S. program.The results confirmed that health classes emphasize problem-solving. Commonalities were also found between the process from identifying the problem to finding a solution (i.e., problem-solving) and the process from information collection to utilization of HL. Therefore, problem-solving and HL development will be required in the future. However, to learn how to solve problems, the descriptions of specific measures in the solution process were judged to be insufficient in both the commentary on curriculum guidelines and their practical application. To improve problem-solving abilities, specific strategies in the HL process and the learning processes of skills-based health education in other countries can be used as references, and participatory learning needs must be enhanced as a learning method.