Healthy Communities – Social space-orientated health education for vulnerable groups to strengthen resilience and social cohesion

Difficult life circumstances and unfavorable health behavior can affect both physical and mental health.

The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly shown the deficits that exist in the area of health education and how quickly individual resilience and social cohesion suffer in crises.

A significant number of individuals, particularly from socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, have low health literacy, experiencing difficulties in finding, understanding, and applying health information, which can lead to further health inequalities.

With our HEALTHY COMMUNITIES project, we illustrate the contribution that adult education can strengthen the health skills of all citizens (including and especially groups with fewer opportunities), counteracting marginalization, and strengthening participation and commitment.

One shortcoming of current health skills development programs is that they do not reach all population groups. The project team has chosen to focus on the local community, in particular through the connection to the living environment in the community, which has so far only been elementary developed.