The WHO Action Network on Measuring Population and Organizational Health Literacy (M-POHL) is an international network for measuring and improving health literacy in populations and organizations, thereby contributing new evidence and insights to this field of work. It connects expertise from research and policy, fosters evidence-based policy decisions, and puts health literacy on international and national agendas.
The M-POHL Network aims to bring value by:
- institutionalizing regular, high-quality international comparative surveys of population health literacy across Europe;
- supporting the collection of data on organizational health literacy; and
- providing data to support evidence-informed policy and practice decisions to improve health literacy, in line with WHO policy frameworks.
The M-POHL organized the second European Health Literacy Survey (HLS19) in 2019–2021, with 17 countries collecting data to measure health literacy, including digital health literacy, and inform interventions, related to policy, health services or communications, in order to improve it. These data pave the way for understanding health literacy and developing and testing new ways of addressing its challenges, including those related to creating environments that are favourable to different levels of health literacy.
