Health literacy through competences

Abstract

This paper presents a proposal for health literacy through the specification and definition of the competences that students must acquire during Compulsory Education. Eight areas of health were determined through a Delphi study, identifying the problems or health situations that students must know how to solve, as well as the competences to be developed and the learning contents necessary to face each of these problems. These learning contents constitute the instrument of analysis to verify to what extent those health situations are present in the official Compulsory Education curriculum. The studies carried out regarding mental and emotional health show that the prescriptive curriculum has some deficiencies that hinder the development of competences, which negatively affects health literacy.