Introduction

Improving health literacy responsiveness at all levels is crucial in mitigating the effect of social health inequality. Being a health literate organization entails a range of features in order to make information and services accessible and available. Brach et al. (2012) specifically described ten attributes of such organizations.

The purpose of this study is to report on a process aiming to improve health literacy responsiveness of the administrative work of the Danish Health Authority.

Methods

The Danish Health Authority has a national responsibility for health issues and work to ensure public health and healthcare services of high quality across Denmark. The institution communicates with a range of organizational stakeholders, health professionals, and ultimately Danish citizens.

In this study, each of the Danish Health Authority administration’s 8 departments appointed 2 frontrunners dedicated to the integration of health literacy in one or more project/work assignment. The projects/work assignments served as study cases.

All frontrunners were invited to participate in 3 workshops between which they worked on their cases. The workshops introduced the ten attributes of health literate organizations. Participants were guided to apply the attributes to their case and evaluate their applicability and effect.

Based on this evaluation, we did a thematic analysis identifying 5 health literacy focus areas: “leadership and culture”, “work processes”, “external products”, “political environment”, and “external target groups”. Each of the original ten attributes was ascribed to one or more theme and characterized further based on local work features. Finally, the analysis informed a preliminary organizational health literacy model adapted to the tasks and circumstances under which the Danish Health Authority perform their responsibility.

Results
At the summit we will present the final organizational health literacy model. The model will serve as a structure around the impending development of diverse materials to support the integration of health literacy responsiveness in the Danish Health Authority Administration.

Conclusion

Our preliminary results show, that it is feasible to work with health literacy responsiveness in health organizations with administrative focus and at distance from the ultimate target group of vulnerable populations, thus supporting health literacy for all.