Josefin Wångdahl

Om mig

My main area of interest is health literacy from a public health perspective. I have mainly carried out research that focused on health literacy and health promotion work linked to newly arrived migrants with a refugee background. What drives me is to produce and spread knowledge about how to reduce inequality in health and healthcare.

Part-time I am doing research in Carin Lennartsson's group in the Social Gerontology Sector at the Aging Research Center (ARC), Karolinska Institutet & Stockholm University on health literacy among older adults in the Forte financed project "Health literacy among older adults: Exploring older people´s prerequisites for understanding health information and making informed health choices" together with Janne Agerholm and others. We partly use data from the Swedish Panel Study of Living Conditions of the Oldest Old (SWEOLD).

Part-time I am teaching at the Division of Nursing, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. I supervise students, works with a course in interproffessional learning and in the Erasmus project Skills4 Health Literacy The project aims to meet the needs of Higher Education Institutions to reduce skills gaps of health and social professionals to promote health literacy capacity-building when supporting persons at risk of dementia with the aim to deliver personalized and relevant interventions.

I am Sweden’s research representative in the Action Network on Measuring Population and Organizational Health Literacy of WHO Europe (M-POHL), a member of the Research Standards Committee of the International Health Literacy Association (IHLA), and co-founder of the Swedish webpage on Health Literacy and the Swedish Health Literacy Network. I often have external assignments regarding health literacy as an expert, trainer and lecturer outside Karolinska Institutet.

Previously I have project lead and evaluated several EU funded research projects that focused on health-promoting activities for migrants with refugee backgrounds. For example the project MILSA educational platform for civic- and health communicators and MILSA psychosocial health project. I am still partly involved in MILSA knowledge-based support platform for migration and health as a health literacy expert.

I have also worked with translations of several health literacy instruments into Swedish and several languages that many migrants in Sweden speak, and studied how valid they are in a Swedish context.

 

Forskningsbeskrivning

 

Scientific original articles, please see "Publikationer" below.

Other scientific works:

1. Selén, K., Wångdahl, J. (ed). (2021). Handbok i samhälls- och hälsokommunikation. Malmö: Länsstyrelsen i Skåne.
2. Doyle, G., Rowlands, G., Joranger, P., Le, C., Boggild, H., Finbråten, SH., Guttersund, O., Lopatina, M., Wångdahl, J., Pelikan, JM. Link, T. for the HLS19 consortium of the WHO action Network M-POHL. (2021). Chapter 14: Health literacy and health-related quality of life as a mediator for health costs, in the International Report on the Methodology, Results, and Recommendations of the European Health Literacy Population Survey 2019-2021 (HLS19) of M-POHL.  The HLS19 Consortium of the WHO Action Network M-POHL, Austrian National Public Health Institute, Vienna.
3. Svensson, P.*, Wångdahl, J*., & Zdravkovic, S. (2021). Utvärdering av MILSA-utbildningen. En delutvärdering av MILSA utbildningsplattform för samhälls- och hälsokommunikation. Malmö: Länsstyrelsen i Skåne.
4. Wångdahl, J., Tomsfelt, C. (2021). Nyanlända deltagares upplevelser av studiecirkeln Vägar vidare efter flykten genom lokal implementering i fördjupande program. Utvärdering av pilottest i Malmö hösten 2020. Malmö: Länsstyrelsen i Skåne
5. Wångdahl, J., Engström, K. (2021). Deltagares upplevelser av MILSA fördjupningsutbildning för samhälls- och hälsokommunikatörer om psykisk hälsa och välbefinnande – en pilotstudie. Malmö: Länsstyrelsen i Skåne.
6. Wångdahl, J., Sorensen, K. (2020). Health literacy och migration. Health literacy. Teori och praktik i hälsofrämjande arbete. Ed. Ringsberg, K et al. Lund: Studentlitteratur.
7. Wångdahl, J. (2020) Hälsolitteracitet bland nyanlända flyktingar i Sverige – implikationer för hälsa och hälso- och sjukvården, i Migranters möte med svensk hälso- och sjukvård. DELMI Avhandlingsnytt 2020:7. Stockholm.
8. Wångdahl, J., Sorensen, K. (2019). Chapter 13: Health literacy research in the Nordic Countries, in International Handbook of Health Literacy – Research, practice and policy across lifespan. Ed. Orkan, O et al. Policy Press: UK.
9. Wångdahl, J., Dahlberg, K., Jaensson, M., Nilsson, U. (2019). Psychometric validation of Swedish and Arabic versions of two health literacy questionnaires, eHEALS and HLS-EU-Q16, for use in a Swedish context: a study protocol. BMJ Open. 17;9(9):e029668. PMID: 31530602
10. Wångdahl, J., Åkerman, E. (2019). Varför är det viktigt med en god hälsokommunikation för alla nyanlända migranter? Socialmedicinsk tidskrift. 96(1):56-65.
11. Wångdahl, J., Lau, M., Nordström, P., Samulowitz, A., Karlsson L. (2017). Hälsolitteracitet - en kommunikativ utmaning för hälso- och sjukvården. Socialmedicinsk tidskrift. 94(2):126-135.
12. Wångdahl, J.  (2017). Health literacy among newly arrived refugees in Sweden and implications for health and healthcare. Doctoral thesis. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis: Uppsala University.
13. Wångdahl, J., Al-Adhami, M. (2016). Hälsokommunikation i samhällsorienteringen i Stockholms län 2015-2016: En utvärderingsrapport. Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, Socialmedicinsk rapportserie.
14. Wångdahl, J. (2014). Vilken betydelse har hälsolitteracitet för hälsoundersökningen för asylsökande? Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, Socialmedicinsk rapportserie.
15. Wångdahl, J. (2014). Uppfattningar om arbetet med hälsoundersökningar för asylsökande: Resultat från fokusgrupper med Migrationsverks- och landstingspersonal i fyra län våren 2012. Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, Socialmedicinsk rapportserie.
16. Wångdahl, J., Åhs, A. (2014). Projekt Athena: En användbar metod för att främja närhet till arbetsmarknaden och hälsa hos långtidsarbetslösa utlandsfödda kvinnor? Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, Socialmedicinsk rapportserie.

Akademiska priser och utmärkelser