Too influential to be overlooked: How a Social Practice View of Health Literacy and Health Promotion is Transforming Research and Intervention

INTRODUCTION: The history of public health shows that our conceptualization of a study object (e.g. sustainability) influences how researchers perceive, explore, assess, and derive insights from it. Thus, a sound conceptualization is essential. Much debate has raged about the proper conceptualization of health literacy (HL). With the increasing focus on HL intervention research, a conceptualization grounded in practice is irreplaceable and needs to be reflected theoretically. This presentation will discuss the conceptualization of HL as situational social practice and the implications for HL research and interventions, based on ethnographic data of an educational settings, language courses. These courses are well suited to explore practices around HL, as their purpose is not to impart information but to promote competences and communicative skills in the life domain of health. METHODS: Ethnographic research including textbook analysis and participant observation in two second language courses in Germany (100 hours) explored the role, manifestation, and promotion of health and HL. Then practice-oriented evidence-informed interventions were developed and general insights derived. RESULTS: We identified more than 500 events for engaging with health information, utterly rich and complex and characterized by specific linguistic, situational, social, practice-related, and contextual features. Despite the same cultural portrayal and contextual influences, the learners’ and teachers’ practices proved to be diverse, varied from imitating to changing to creating. We developed complex interventions that provided teachers with both a social-practice-view on HL, the skills to purposefully promote it, and materials. DISCUSSION: Any use of HL is a situational social practice, and consciously taking this perspective allows us to better understand, explore the spaces and constraints for action, and develop more targeted interventions towards sustainability.