Health literacy: Global advances with a focus upon the Shanghai Declaration on promoting health in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

Abstract

In a steadily growing effort, the world has witnessed more than three decades of effort in research, practice, and policy to socially construct what has been identified as ‘health literacy. While much of the earlier work in health literacy was in the United States, the extent of scholars and practitioners is now truly global. To advance international health literacy, the chapter highlights the role of the World Health Organization (WHO) and a series of international conferences that began in 1980s. More specifically, the chapter outlines World Health Organization’s overarching health literacy efforts, notes the importance of health literacy within WHO’s new organization structure, briefly describes how the concept of health literacy emerged throughout a generation of the WHO’s international conferences, suggests an ethical foundation for the WHO’s health literacy work, and explains how the groundwork set by the WHO provides some challenges and foundations for future health literacy research and practice.