Health Promotion as Collective Pedagogy: Reframing Health Literacy in the Post-Pandemic Era

Abstract

Critical health literacy (CHL) has challenged individualist models of health literacy by demonstrating that health-related competence is shaped by social, structural, and political environments. Building on a recent definition of CHL as reflection and action upon health-determining factors, on CHL in pandemic conditions, and the development of health literacy as a “social vaccine,” this theoretical article identifies a persistent pedagogical gap: the processes through which capacities for critical reflection and collective action are formed remain undertheorized. This paper proposes a collective pedagogy framework for CHL grounded in the applied educational theory of Makarenko and integrated with post-pandemic scholarship on collective agency, upstream determinants, and community service-learning. The COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying “infodemic” demonstrated that effective health responses depend on institutional trust, collective accountability, and shared agency rather than individual information competence alone. This paper contends that future pandemics are structurally probable and that health promotion and health education should be built with this reality in view. Drawing on sociology of educational reproduction and field relations, it also examines the structural conditions that constrain the realization of collective CHL—arguing that clarity about those limits is itself a necessary contribution to the field. Practical implications are outlined for curriculum design, experiential learning, assessment reform, and institutional ecosystem development.