INVITATION FOR ADVICE AND COOPERATION - A CROSSCULTURAL PROJECT

HEALTH LITERACY - GESUNDHEITSMUENDIGKEIT 

This is an Invitation for Cooperation with a two [plus one] year international interdisciplinary research project on lay health education and the promotion of lay health competence, funded by the German Research Council [DFG grant no. FOR491/1-1]

DFG has funded a major collaboration research project in CROSSCULTURAL BIOETHICS with seven sub-projects [coordinator Heiner Roetz]. Within this framework a special sub-project HEALTH LITERACY will focus on health education, health responsibility, and health care competence of the lay person [chief investigator Hans-Martin Sass]. Other sub-projects deal with bioethical issues in China, Japan, South-Korea, Buddhism, Islamic medical law, informed consent, intra-cultural differences in bioethics and cultural reflections on bioethics. Sub-projects will be interactive and coordinated.

The sub-project HEALTH LITERACY will

(1) collect health care rules, action guides, recommendations, and health care principles written for the lay or addressing care for health by individuals and families in various branches of Hippocratic, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hinduist, Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian and other cultures and professional traditions,

(2) analyze traditional rules and principles within their historical and cultural context,

(3) evaluate how far those rules and principles could or should complement rules and principles of professional conduct in contemporary physicians ethics and nursing ethics,

(4) develop interactive rules or maxims and corresponding principles for trust-based lay-professional interaction in health care,

(5) introduce issues of lay health competence into professional and public debate on health care and health care priorities and allocation.

Leading Questions in the HEALTH LITERACY project include: (1) What can the lay person do for his or her health and health care?- (2) Which traditional health care rules have been developed in different cultures and how to which extend have they been known to individuals and communities?- (3) Which role can or should health literacy play in modern systems of education, communication and health care?

Phase One will collect sources from the history of different cultures and medical traditions. These materials will be made accessible on the internet to advisors, participants and members of the sub-projects for information, comment and discussion. Most material will be available in English, some material also in Chinese or German.

Subsequent Phases will include workshops, evaluative papers, publications.

Please, indicate your interest and let us know, if you would like to contribute or assist us in a most fascinating project. At this time we are most interested in finding material for the soon to be established webpage. We ask for your advice on how to build the webpage and for suggestions on where to find suitable material. Also, we would be interested to know whether you would like to have access to the webpage and be informed on future activities of our project. 

Prof. Dr. phil. Hans-Martin Sass

<sassh@georgetown.edu>

Prof. Dr. med. Dr. phil. Xiaomei Zhai

<xmzhai@hotmail.com>

Dr. med. Dr. phil. Ilhan Ilkilic

<ilhan.ilkilic@uni-tuebingen.de>