Led by: Dr Carissa Bonner

The Heart Health Literacy project aims to support all communities to understand and act on information about their heart health, to reduce inequity in cardiovascular outcomes. 

This is a partnership with the Heart Foundation, Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, and Prevention Centre; with additional NHMRC and Federal Government funding. We develop and implement digital health literacy tools to support evidence-based, shared decision making about cardiovascular disease prevention and management. A/Prof Carissa Bonner is the Chief Investigator on several grants to develop and evaluate resources for:

1. GPs and practice nurses: A new interface for the CVD prevention guidelines was co-designed with GPs and patients, including a risk communication tool to explain risk and management options. This was incorporated into new national guidelines at www.cvdcheck.org.au. We are investigating new ways to implement health literacy support for Heart Health Checks, including SMS 'nudges' from general practice.

2. Consumers and patients: We codesigned a range of effective health literacy support tools for Heart Health Checks, available at www.checkyourheart.com.au. This includes a quiz to build knowledge, a risk communication tool, decision aids about medication, and action plans for healthy lifestyle changes. It is available at www.checkyourheart.com.au. This will be adapted to different languages and cultural needs in Western Sydney.

3. Primary Health Networks (PHNs): We have explored the needs of PHNs, mapped national activities in CVD prevention, and tested new strategies for implementing communication tools via clinical decision support software (e.g. HealthPathways and PenCS) and quality improvement programs (e.g. PIP QI and GP education). We will explore how the National Health Literacy Strategy can be implemented to support heart health literacy through PHN activities.

4. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities: We are working with representatives of NAATSIHWP, NAACHO and ACI to support shared decision making in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. This includes a website to guide health professionals through a culturally appropriate shared decision making process for Heart Health Checks, available at www.heartyarningtool.com. We are currently evaluating this tool.

5. Heart health writers: We are developing heart health literacy software to help health writers explain heart health in a way that patients can understand and act on. This involves an environmental scan of current heart health websites, consumer input to create plain language summaries and images for common cardiovascular terms, and the use of generative AI to support rapid and scalable text, image and video content creation.