Using a Health Literacy Lens to Critically Consider Children’s Experiences of Healthcare Procedures in England

This chapter will critically consider children’s health literacy, with a particular focus on routine healthcare procedures. This aspect of healthcare will be positioned against the backdrop of national health literacy initiatives and guidance within England. The chapter will examine individual, distributed, and organizational health literacy and how these impact children and young people being able to access, understand, and apply health information to shape their procedural experiences. The chapter includes two examples of health literacy projects which have worked with children and young people with a range of abilities and conditions to develop resources for use within hospital settings in England. These projects aimed to redress the tendency for health literacy initiatives to be identified, developed, and evaluated by adults. In order to help children and young people develop health literacy in relation to clinical procedures, we need to create environments, organizations, and communities which are also health literate. The chapter concludes by arguing that health literacy research and practice could gain further ground by empowering children and young people to shape the health literacy agenda at a local, national, and international level.