Health Without Borders

Background Research at global and European level have shown that low levels of health literacy are directly related to a higher number of hospital admissions and with greater use of emergency services and, also, with a lower prevalence of preventive individual and family attitudes in the field of health, leading to a lower quality of life. Moreover, nowadays there is strong evidence that health literacy contributes not only to health promotion and disease prevention, but also to the effectiveness and efficiency of national health services.According to the European Health Literacy Survey, among the poor health literate European population, more than 1 out of 4 people showed an inadequate ability to collect, process, understand, and use health-related information (Palumbo et al., 2016). Health education is a strategy to contribute to the improvement of health literacy and personal care of the population, promoting citizenship in health, making people more autonomous and responsible for their own health and of those who depend on them and their community. Objectives With Health Without Borders project we were improving health literacy skills in young migrants, refugees and marginalised youngsters in an embedded learning perspective, while promoting a set of socio educational innovative approaches for front-line youth workers to raise awareness with young migrants and refugees about the importance of health literacy in their daily lives. We wanted to achieve: -Increased awareness about the health literacy needs of the target of youth immigrants and disadvantaged young people -increased awareness on the available tools and methods to support health literacy of immigrant people -increased access to health literacy resources (project portal and other online sources where to find specific educational contents) -Increased autonomy in the self development of multimedia communication resources in the field of health literacy - professional growth of youth workers necessary to help promote health literacy. Implementation The key activities of the project were: - development of 3 intellectual outputs; - implementation of a learning, teaching and training activity for youth workers; - organisation of transnational partner meetings; - working with local working groups; - local piloting with youth workers; - local piloting with young refugees/migrants; - multiplier events; - administrative tasks related to project management such as impact plans and reports, quality assurance, dissemination activities, exploitation and sustainability plans. Achievements In the Health Without Borders project we have: - Developed innovative user-friendly Health Literacy Toolkit of Resources (IO1), which aims to foster Health Literacy skills, competences and attitudes in the daily life of young people, by facilitating the access to audiovisual health information and improve their availability, while providing embedded learning opportunities. The resources were built on Comics, Video Storytelling and Infographics. - Developed a front-line In-Service Training Programme (IO2) aiming to (a) present the educational resources on health literacy developed in the project; (b) better understand the principles of health literacy; (c) understand the importance of a cohesive communication strategy while working on health literacy with marginalised youth; (c) understand the principles and benefits of embedded learning environments with youth; (d) understand the principles and benefits of using comics, storytelling and gamification strategies while working with marginalised youth. - Developed a user-friendly Online Portal (IO3), aiming to (a) enable the access to all educational materials.