Ophelia (Optimising Health Literacy and Access)
Welcome to the Health Literacy Development website. On this website you will find information about Ophelia and important scientific publications that describe health literacy development and ways to improve the quality of services your organisation provides to community members – especially for people with health literacy challenges.
Ophelia – Optimising Health Literacy and Access – is a process for improving health outcomes through authentic community consultation, meaningful engagement, and collaboration. Ophelia is the product of more than 20 years of research, evaluation, training, and practice. Each Ophelia project seeks to improve health and equity by increasing the availability and accessibility of health information and services in locally-appropriate ways.
The Ophelia process identifies community health literacy needs to inform the co-design and testing of potential solutions.
Ophelia uses a strengths-based, solution-oriented approach to health literacy measurement to identify clear information about the actions that need to be put in place to improve health outcomes and reduce health disparities. Therefore, the Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ) and/or the eHealth Literacy Questionnaire are the most often used questionnaires within the Ophelia process. These tools measures different aspects of health literacy, including digital health literacy, to uncover where people do really well and where people really need help.
The Ophelia Manual
The Ophelia process enables easy application of evidence-based health literacy development strategies.
The Ophelia Process
The Ophelia process enables meaningful engagement to understand and build on local knowledge and wisdom, as well as international evidence, to co-design, develop and implement health literacy actions that are accessible, sustainable, and useful for the people who need them. It is a whole of system process that extends from establishing what the health or equity problem is through to supporting health policy and scaling up fit-for-purpose solutions.
The purpose of Ophelia projects is to develop interventions that respond to identified access and engagement issues.
The three phases and eight steps of the Ophelia process
The Ophelia process has been refined through implementation in various community member and professional groups in many countries, including among people experiencing vulnerability, and in busy clinical settings.
There are three phases of activities and each phase has several steps
- Phase 1 Identify strengths, needs and action ideas (3 steps)
- Phase 2 Select, plan and test health literacy actions (3 steps)
- Phase 3 Implement, evaluate and improve health literacy actions (2 steps)
The Ophelia Principles
There are eight principles that underpin the Optimising Health Literacy and Access process. Ophelia is a strongly principles-based process because contexts in which it is applied vary immensely, ie from low- to high-income countries, including marginalised and diverse populations. Applying the principles helps to adapt and implement the process of Ophelia according to local wisdom and needs, while still ensuring that better health and equity outcomes are generated. In this way, Ophelia deeply respects diversity.
Let’s Work Together
We are always looking for new opportunities to make a difference. Please get in touch and one of our project managers will contact you about beginning the proposal process
