Building health literacy and community capacity to support children's speech and language development in Ghana.

To address community level need and promote equity, speech-language pathologists need to extend beyond a traditional focus on individuals with identified communication needs, to focus on community-level capacity building. This paper presents an example of innovative practice from Ghana, where a volunteer team work to share evidence-based information about speech and language development, and ways to support this, with caregivers and professionals. The team aim to provide information in relevant and accessible ways, to build capacity of families and professionals, using a range of communication channels. The paper commences with a discussion of health literacy and the role speech-language pathologists can play in building health literacy for parents of young children. It then describes the work of the team, presented as an edited interview, framed through the lens of health literacy. It shows how supporting health literacy about communication development is critical where access to clinical services is challenging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]