Critical health literacy in pandemics: the special case of COVID-19

In a pandemic like the current COVID-19 crisis, the active participation of the public is of central importance. Certain factors typical for new pandemic diseases complicate or obstruct the populations’ contributions. Public health and health promotion experts need to understand the key role of critical health literacy in a pandemic. Here I make the case for a definition of critical health literacy in a pandemic, CHL-P. We recently developed a set of survey items to measure selected aspects of CHL-P in a sample of Swiss university student and I will report first results on their distribution and associations with relevant co-factors. Overall, I suggest that the concept of CHL-P can help professionals to support individuals and communities as agents for effectively dealing with the public health crisis.