Abstract
The WHO publication The Solid Facts: Health Literacy suggests ‘educational interventions play a central role in promoting and strengthening health literacy.’ In Northern Ireland, the public health framework Making Life Better includes key priorities to support ‘improving health literacy aims to influence not only individual lifestyle decisions, and decisions about treatment and self-care, but also raise awareness of the determinants of health.’
An Innovation Lab Research suggests there is a gap in school education to develop understanding of self-care and minor illness. A schools programme was developed to build a culture of health in which children are supported and enabled to make healthy choices for self-care in their daily lives and have a greater understanding of the best time and way to use health services.
The Pharmacy Schools Programme developed by Belfast Healthy Cities, working in partnership with the Department of Health, is an interactive teaching resource available to primary schools across Northern Ireland, with lesson plans for children aged 4-11. The lessons are designed to help children to understand health professionals and health services, the role of a pharmacist, management of common childhood ailments, medication safety and to best access and understand health information. The interactive programme includes a puppet show, storybook, conversations with pharmacists, games, role-play, and themed research. The Pharmacy Schools Programme is designed to promote self-care and awareness of community pharmacy services to treat common childhood ailments, such as common colds, diarrhoea, hay fever, head lice and sore throats, as well as the importance of medication safety using a health literacy approach, for primary school children in Northern Ireland.
The programme provides incremental learning for children to establish health literacy skills, as well as cross curricular activities such as literacy, mathematics and science. The involvement of a wide range of partners, including teachers and children in the development of a useful and usable resource was a critical success factor. A flexible approach enabled the inclusion of key messages from WHO’s ‘Medication Without Harm’ Global Patient Safety Challenge. To increase accessibility, the programme can now be viewed in 44 languages on Belfast Healthy Cities website.
Co-produced with a range of organisations, it enabled government to work directly with schools and communities to deliver a number of key strategic priorities for Health. Feedback from schools using the programme has provided a fuller understanding of the value of the programme which can support future investments, policies and practices. The programme opens the discussion on the range of settings in which pharmacists work and allows children to consider the broad range of options of pharmacy as a career, as well as pharmacy wellbeing advisors.
In 2023 Department of Health and Belfast Healthy Cities partnered with STEM NI to deliver training to 45 teacher, to support promotion and delivery of the programme. Over 100 schools signed up to deliver the programme as part of promotion during Self-Care Week and Ask the Pharmacist week.