Health literacy is closely linked to the development of health promotion actions, and in the last years, it has been broadly discussed worldwidely. In 2016 occurred  the 9th Global Health Promotion Conference in Shanghai, where health literacy was highlighted by been considered one of the three pillars of health promotion, as well as the development of good governance and the creation of healthier cities.

Considering health literacy as a powerful tool to achieve the objectives of health promotion, it is necessary to create a management environment that enables greater engagement of public health policies that support health literacy actions at the daily practices that are unfold in the lives of communities allied to the need to ensure people's autonomy over their own health more effectively.

Therefore, the objective of this work was to verify how health literacy has been approached in the Brazilian health system, especially with regard to the institutional instrument related to the National Health Promotion Policy.

The methodology used was the documentary analysis, where the most recent legislation that regulates the National Health Promotion Policy in Brazil was consulted.

The results show that the regulatory framework of the National Health Promotion Policy does not point to improve health literacy actions, even if they were expressed with a different nomenclature or denomination for the time when the aforementioned Policy was implemented.

In this context, it is emphasized the fact that this Policy was revised and consolidated in 2017, one year after the 9th International Conference on Health Promotion in 2016, which already brought health literacy as one of the pillars of Health Promotion.

Thus, one must question the real role of representatives of the participating countries in each of the Conferences, as the managers converge on a series of commitments to be developed in their respective nations.

Therefore, it is necessary to promote the approach of the Policies of national scope with the internationally agreed goals, in order to develop the most sensitive objectives addressed by the practice of health literacy.