Integrating the Principles of Socioecology and Critical Pedagogy for Health Promotion Health Literacy Interventions

While health literacy research has experienced tremendous growth in the last two decades, the field still struggles to devise interventions that lead to lasting change. Most health literacy interventions are at the individual level and focus on resolving clinician–patient communication difficulties. As a result, the interventions use a deficit model that treats health literacy as a patient problem that needs to be fixed or circumvented. We propose that public health health literacy interventions integrate the principles of socioecology and critical pedagogy to develop interventions that build capacity and empower individuals and communities. Socioecology operates on the premise that health outcome is hinged on the interplay between individuals and their environment. Critical pedagogy assumes education is inherently political, and the ultimate goal of education is social change. Integrating these two approaches will provide a useful frame in which to develop interventions that move beyond the individual level.