As I mentioned before, I have been invited to participate in the International Seminar “Aplicación de las nuevas tecnologías a la prevención y asistencia en adicciones (”New technologies applications to prevention and assistance of addictions” (26th and 27th, June). Here goes my presentation:

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Today I have attended to Catalonia Health Promoting Hospitals Network kick off meeting. This Network, coordinated by Cristina Iniesta, has organised a conference about Health Literacy with Rima Rudd as key speaker. Rima Rudd conference was marvellous. Here comes my notes from the conference:

She started talking about income and education as the fundamental axis of health, beyond health care services, and health literacy as a pathway to health outcomes.

She stated that Health Literacy is a function of individuals’ skills and social demands. Core skills of health literacy are: Reading (also on the screen) Writing Numeracy Oral exchange (speaking and listening) Literacy skills influences one’s ability to access information and to navigate in highly literate environments of modern societies. After this definition she talked about how literacy skills of individuals constrained participation in economy and in society. Furthermore, she explained how these constrains influenced health care demand taking into account that health literacy is an interaction between individual factors and health sector factors

Individual factors:

• Literacy and numeracy skills;
• Language skills;
• Emotional state;
• Heath status;
• Experience and background knowledge

Health sector factors:

• Communication skills of health care workers;
• Institutional features;
• Procedures and processes;
• Material in use;
• Assumptions.

After this introduction she reviewed her main research findings. At this point I would like to suggest that you may visit her great website Health Literacy Studies. I also may suggest to check her presentation slide presentation Literacy and Health and her literature revision.

I have uploaded her presentation to SlideShare to spread her wonderful work

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Finally, I would like to thank Cristina Iniesta and the rest of the Catalonia Hospital Promoting Health Network for the organization of the event. I’m sure they will become a reference in Health Literacy soon.

First of all I would like to thank Gustavo Cardoso, Miquel Angel Mayer and indeed Rita Espanha and Michael Hardey for the marvellous working days we had in Barcelona. It was a honour to have the opportunity to share during three days thoughts, reflections, past researches and ideas about health and the Internet. I’m sure those are just the beginning of future collaborations. Thank you very much for such a wonderful days.

The conferences matched the audience’s expectations. Michael and Rita have allowed me to upload their presentations to the Internet as long as many people have showed their interest in the conference but they were not able to attend to Barcelona. I ‘m pleasure to announce that both conferences were video recorded and will be available in two week at UOC YouTube Channel.

Rita Espanha and Gustavo Cardoso have been reserching the transition to Network Society in Portugal. Most of the researches are available at OberCom. OberCom (Observatory for the Media) is directed by Gustavo Cardoso. He and Rita Espanha supervise the centre’s scientific research development; manage the centre research networking and institutional relations. OberCom is a non-profit research centre whose main goal is the production of data and diffusion of information about the Media, thus contributing to better knowledge of the field of communications in Portugal.

As I posted before, they have developed a research project titled Health in the Information Age. Their main conclusions were showed in Rita’s presentation

In 1999 Michael Hardey wrote Doctor in the house: the Internet as a source of lay health knowledge and the challenge to expertise. He was one of the first researchers who started to analyse Health and the Internet and the transformation of the relation between health professions and their clients/users/patients. In 2001, “E-Health”: the Internet and the transformation of patients into consumers and producers of health knowledge was published. Is it sound like Web 2.0?. His forthcoming paper will be Hardey, M. (2008) Public health and Web 2.0, Journal of the Royal Institute of Health Promotion 128(4):171-179

Finally, I would like to thank International Graduate Institute (Open University of Catalonia) and TicSalut Foundation for sponsoring the conference.

Yesterday, I was invited by Cristina Iniesta, Hospital del Mar Manager Director and Health Promoting Hospital Network Coordinator, to present the results from Internet, Health and Society in Catalonia in one of the network meetings at Hospital Sant Joan de Deu.

The aims of the presentation were: (1) to analyse in what way and to what extent the Internet is adopted and embedded by Catalan health system; (2) to discuss the implications for health promotion, taking into account Health Promoting Hospital objectives and, (3) to find ways of future collaborations.

The atmosphere of the session was excellent. I’m sure we will find many ways of future collaboration. Finally, I’m grateful to Kathryn O´Connor, my wonderful English teacher at UOC, for introducing me Cristina Iniesta and, last but not least, I would like to thank Cristina Iniesta for her kind invitation and her open thinking.