The Dos And Don’ts Of Health Literacy, With Self-Care Forum’s Trevor Gore

Health literacy is a phrase you hear a lot in consumer health at the moment, but it's not always clear what people mean by it, or what a company is actually supposed to do about it. In this episode of Over the Counter, HBW Insight talks to Trevor Gore, a trustee of the Self-Care Forum who spent more than two decades at Reckitt and now looks at healthcare through behavioural science. Gore's argument is that most companies treat health literacy as a readability job, making labels and leaflets easier to follow, when the harder work is changing what people do: helping them recognize symptoms, understand risk and act on it. We discuss the three levels of health literacy, the gap between what people intend to do and what they actually do, the line between educating and promoting, and why awareness on its own buys you almost nothing. Timestamps 3:00 – Introductions 5:00 – What is health literacy? 7:00 – What has health literacy become so important? 15:30 – What are CHC companies doing well? 25:00 – The role of behavioural science 29:00 – What do you need to do now?