How Can Young People Identify Reliable Health Information?

As part of the Erasmus+ KA153 Mobility of Youth Workers project “Critical Health Literacy” (Project No: 2025-3-AT01-KA153-YOU-000370372), youth workers from Austria, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Türkiye, Georgia, and Romania came together between 17–24 March 2026 to strengthen their competences in critical health literacy and develop new approaches for supporting young people in navigating health information.

The project is coordinated by FI Gesundheits- und Sportverein (Austria) and implemented in partnership with Gənclər Azad Sahibkarlıq Fəaliyyətində İctimai Birliyi (Azerbaijan), Debreceni Sport és Kulturális Központ (Hungary), Aktif Gençlik Platformu (Türkiye), Nuvoloq (Georgia), and S.C CYBERWARE CLOUD S.R.L (Romania). Throughout the mobility, participants engage in educational activities designed to improve their ability to critically assess health-related information and transfer these skills to young people.

One of the key activities carried out on the second day of the project was the workshop “A Youth-Friendly Credibility Checklist,” coordinated by the Azerbaijani partner organization. The workshop focused on strengthening youth workers’ ability to evaluate online health information and developing practical tools that can help young people identify trustworthy sources.

The session began with a brainstorming activity in which participants reflected on how they usually assess health-related content encountered in their daily lives. Youth workers shared their own methods for distinguishing reliable information from misleading content, bringing together diverse perspectives and experiences from different countries and professional backgrounds.

Following this discussion, participants explored the main criteria used to evaluate the credibility of online health information. Topics such as authorship and expertise, the timeliness of information, objectivity and bias, the quality of references and sources, website ownership, and overall website structure were examined in detail. These criteria provided participants with a framework for critically assessing the reliability of digital health resources.

After the theoretical introduction, participants were divided into small working groups and tasked with creating a “Youth-Friendly Credibility Checklist.” The aim was to transform complex evaluation criteria into simple, practical, and accessible questions that young people could easily understand and apply when encountering health information online.

During the practical phase of the workshop, each group evaluated different health and fitness resources using the checklists they had developed. Participants analyzed websites, blogs, and various online health materials, allowing them to test the effectiveness of their newly created tools in real-life scenarios. This hands-on approach enabled participants to apply theoretical knowledge directly to authentic examples.

At the end of the activity, each group presented its checklist and shared the results of its evaluations with the wider group. The presentations encouraged discussion, peer learning, and the exchange of experiences among youth workers from different partner countries. Participants also reflected on the challenges of assessing online information and explored ways to make critical evaluation skills more accessible to young people.

By the conclusion of the workshop, participants had not only strengthened their own ability to assess online health information but had also developed practical educational tools that can be used directly in youth work activities. Through initiatives such as this, the Critical Health Literacy project continues to contribute to empowering young people to make informed decisions and critically evaluate the health information they encounter in the digital world.