Critical health literacy in secondary schools: a pilot study in Ticino

The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by the spread of a huge amount of information, the “infodemic” (WHO 2020), which is not verified empirically and is favored by the expansion of digitization. The massive presence of unfiltered information may be associated to risky health behaviors. The pandemic simply shed the light on the already existing problem of mis-disinformation, i.e. the involuntary or voluntary dissemination of false information. Given these premises, the active role of the individual and his/her ability to evaluate information become the priorities. In this scope, a specific competence called critical health literacy (CHL) is fundamental. CHL is defined as “the ability to critically analyze information relating to health from a wide range of sources”. The goal of this project relies on the improvement of CHL in Ticino secondary schools through the feasibility test of introducing a training curriculum within the study plan.