BackgroundCritical health literacy enables older adults to make informed health decisions and take actions for the health and wellbeing of themselves and their community, within their own social and cultural context. A community-based approach has the potential to improve the critical health literacy of older adults and their communities. However, it is not clear how such initiatives consider critical health literacy. Therefore, this study explored how community-based initiatives address the critical health literacy of older adults and their communities.MethodsA systematic literature search was conducted. Two reviewers independently screened titles and abstracts, as well as the quality of the methodological and community-based elements of the studies. In addition, a meta-synthesis was carried out, consisting of a qualitative text analysis of the results sections of the 23 included studies.ResultsWe identified two main themes, which are practices that contribute to the critical health literacy of older adults as well as their communities: 1) collaborative learning, and 2) social support. In these practices we identified reciprocity as a key characteristic of both co-learning and social support.ConclusionsThis study provides the first overview of community-based initiatives that implicitly address the critical health literacy of older adults and their community. Our results demonstrate that in the context of one’s own life collaborative learning and social support could contribute to people’s understanding and ability to judge, sift and use health information. We therefore suggest to add these two practices to the definition of critical health literacy.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-017-4570-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Organisational Health Literacy (OHL)-interventions are needed to overcome health inequality. OHL-interventions have successfully identified communication barriers at the organisational level, but evidence is limited on the extent to which this leads to sustainable organisational change. This study aims to assess the implementation fidelity, moderators (barriers and facilitators), and long-term impact of OHL-interventions in hospitals in Ireland and The Netherlands. We used a longitudinal mixed-methods approach to assess two similar OHL-interventions in one Irish and three Dutch hospitals. The OHL-interventions concerned the improvement of navigation and implementation of health literacy-friendly communication throughout organisations. Participants were 24 hospital employees and 40 older adults who use hospital services. At six, eight, and eighteen months, we assessed the level of implementation, barriers and facilitators, and impact through questionnaires and in-depth semi-structured interviews. After older adults and professionals had identified a number of communication problems, we found that professionals had successfully implemented OHL-interventions to promote navigation and comprehensible communication. Limited resources and variation in organisational structures and procedures were perceived as barriers to implementation. The participation of service users, leadership support, and a stepwise implementation of interventions were perceived to facilitate implementation. In the long term, the OHL-interventions led to system-wide improvements, as shown by better embedding of health literacy policies, enhanced patient engagement, provision of plain language training and comprehensible information. Findings were similar for the two countries. Embedded OHL-interventions resulted in sustainable and system-wide health literacy changes in all four hospitals. Following implementation, OHL-interventions have the potential to promote health equity and empowerment among health service users.

This training has potential for wider application in education and practice in Europe.

In this paper, we focus on intentional communities in the Western world. These communities consist of a variety of groups, with different characteristics, ideologies and motivations. Examples are eco-villages, religious communities and communities of lesbians. These groups intend, at least to some extent, to withdraw from mainstream urban society, challenging norms of urban life, e.g. wasteful behaviour, stressful lives or heterosexual stereotypes, and create their own places in rural areas. Key questions that we seek to address in the paper are: What types of intentional communities can be identified? To what extent are intentional communities withdrawn from the rural areas in which they are established? We attempt to answer these through discussing the results of a survey among 496 communities. Furthermore, we describe an example of the ecological type of community, since these communities are most explicitly challenging urban norms and values. Copyright (c) 2007 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG.

Nursing homes have been criticised for not providing a home for their residents. This article aims to provide insight into (1) the features of home and institution as experienced by residents and caregivers of a secured ward in a nursing home, and (2) how interventions implemented on the ward can contribute to a more home-like environment. For this purpose, a participatory intervention study, involving both caregivers and residents, was carried out. We collected data through qualitative research methods: observations, in-depth interviews and diaries to evaluate the interventions over time. We adopted an informed grounded theory approach, and used conceptualisations of total institutions and home as a theoretical lens. We found that the studied ward had strong characteristics of a total institution, such as batch living, block treatment and limited privacy. To increase the sense of home, interventions were formulated and implemented by the caregivers to increase the residents' autonomy, control and privacy. In this process, caregivers' perceptions and attitudes towards the provision of care shifted from task-oriented to person-centred care. We conclude that it is possible to increase the home-like character of a secured ward by introducing core values of home by means of interventions involving both caregivers and residents.