What part of your district would benefit most from a literacy program? What’s the average health literacy level in the neighbourhoods surrounding your hospital? This kind of granular data on literacy and health literacy levels is now available at a glance, thanks to interactive online literacy maps created by the Canadian Council on Learning.

It feels auspicious that my first day of blogging is happening on Blog Action Day, an annual event which unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day. Blog Action Day focuses attention on an issue of global importance, with the aim of sparking discussion and action. This year’s theme is climate change.

Now …..what does that have to do with health?

Hello and welcome. This new blog is our way of bringing JCHLA’s consumer health information column online, to a format that’s easier to discover and retrieve and to a space that’s more conducive to links and discussion. My plan is to pre-publish column content here on a regular basis and add some juicy extra content - event announcements, topical commentary, etc. - that won’t necessarily appear in JCHLA.