Critical health literacy for the marginalised: Empirical findings

Critical health literacy enables individuals and communities to critically analyse information about health and its determinants and participate more actively in the political and social decisions that affect health. It remains, however, the least well explored domain of health literacy. This chapter explores the key characteristics of critical health literacy and presents a Systematic Review of interventions designed to develop it. Through this, the chapter illustrates the application of the concept in practice and offers important learning about strategies, challenges and opportunities to operationalise critical health literacy at individual and community level. The review illustrates the lack of interventions across the life course and that particular challenges exist in successfully building the empowerment and political action element of the concept. Successful interventions are shown to be based on critical pedagogy and the chapter argues that the contribution of critical health literacy to the health literacy movement should not be neglected. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copy edited version of a chapter published in International Handbook of Health Literacy; research, practice and policy across the life-span. Details of the definitive published version and how to purchase it are available online at: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/international-handbook-of-health-literacy.