About us
We focus on global health and equity with an emphasis on health literacy measurement, co-design processes, and multidisciplinary research to improve community health outcomes.
We are a multidisciplinary team of researchers committed to improving community health outcomes. Our impact is through the development and refinement of methods, tools, and processes that can be used by health or community service organisations, of any size, to support them to work with their communities to co-design needed, wanted and implementable solutions.
We work predominately in health literacy, understanding how people access, understand, appraise, remember, and use health information and services to promote and maintain good health and wellbeing for themselves and those around them. It is a multifaceted concept, linked to people’s health experiences, that can also be impacted by people’s daily practices in different cultures and settings.
Our expertise in developing health literacy measures, including the Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ) and eHealth Literacy Questionnaire (eHLQ), enables people to gain insights into the many facets of health literacy. With these measures, health providers and governments can identify and understand the health literacy profiles of individuals and/or populations.
Not content with simply identifying the challenges, we have worked over many years with health providers to co-design an approach that combines measurement with deep and genuine engagement with the community. The result is the Ophelia (Optimising Health Literacy and Access) process.
Recognised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a credible, validated approach that countries can adopt, Ophelia is a major step forward in public health because it provides a structured, evidence-based way to improve disease prevention and management while focusing on equity.
Our tools, methods, and processes, used in over 100 countries, have global impact driving better health outcomes for communities and consumers by embedding the change where it is needed, wanted and implementable. Our work has been extensively published, and Ophelia is being used in a diverse range of contexts and settings, in Australia and Europe.
Research group director
| Name | Position | Telephone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Professor Richard Osborne | Professor Global Health and Equity | R.Osborne@latrobe.edu.au |
Team
| Name | Position | Telephone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dr. Leigh Kinsman | Prof Violet Vines Marshman Ctr Rural Res | L.Kinsman@latrobe.edu.au | |
| Sharla Cartner | Research Off. Global Health and Equity | S.Cartner@latrobe.edu.au | |
| Dr. Christina Cheng | Snr Research Fellow Global Health Equity | Christina.Cheng@latrobe.edu.au | |
| Associate profe. Melanie Hawkins | Principal Res Fellow Global Health Equity | M.Hawkins@latrobe.edu.au | |
| Professor Richard Osborne | Professor Global Health and Equity | R.Osborne@latrobe.edu.au |