This scientific publication examines organisational health literacy in Austria, focusing on policy developments and the results of a pilot assessment in primary care. The article highlights a shift in health literacy thinking: from viewing health literacy mainly as an individual responsibility to recognising it as a responsibility of organisations and systems.
The paper describes Austria’s long-standing work on organisational health literacy, including its integration into national health literacy policy and primary care. It then presents results from a JA PreventNCD pilot in which ten Austrian primary care units tested an organisational health literacy self-assessment tool.
The findings suggest that self-assessment can help healthcare organisations identify strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for improvement. In the participating primary care units, user-oriented aspects such as access, navigation and communication were relatively well developed, while organisational anchoring, staff development, digital inclusion and participatory feedback mechanisms required further attention.
The article concludes that organisational health literacy self-assessment can support learning, quality improvement and equity in primary care by making structural barriers more visible and helping teams translate health literacy concepts into concrete action.
Read the full paper in Frontiers in Public Health:
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1802212