The government's latest five year Healthy Tasmania action plan has eight key areas, including health literacy, eating well, and reducing alcohol harm, and will focus on 'priority populations' known to have poorer health.

The government committed $10 million to the plan, and $8 million for Healthy Tasmania Fund grants.

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Australian Medical Association state president Helen McArdle said in order to reduce poor health outcomes in Tasmania, significant investment was needed.

She said that $10 million for preventative health was just a drop in the ocean.

But added that improving health literacy in Tasmania, with a particular focus on children, would be a good use of resources.

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"We support anything that can be done in the area of preventative health. If we can make the population healthier it reduces demands on GPs but also on the acute hospital setting," Dr McArdle said.

"We know Tasmania's aren't healthy and that they fail in a number of the health measures, such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease and we know we have poor health literacy," she said.

"If people can understand he health messages, and understand the impact activities have on their health then they have a better ability to change it."

Health Minister Jeremy Rockcliff said a focus on prevention was good for the individual but also for the entire state.

He said the last Healthy Tasmania strategic plan 2016 - 2021 helped to reduce smoking rates and increased physical activity and fruit and vegetable intake.

"But we know there is more work to be done," he said.

"Importantly, the [new] plan will focus on children and young people as we aim for intergenerational change to secure the health and wellbeing of Tasmanians into the future," he said.

"By focusing on priority populations and empowering communities by promoting health literacy, our plan will help Tasmanians to take positive actions to improve their general health and wellbeing."

The latest Plan found that one in 10 Tasmanians could not understand health information, with ABS data from 2006 showing that 6 our of 10 Tasmanians had poor health literacy.

It stated that older people, people with multiple chronic conditions, low socio-economic households and priority populations, which included aboriginal populations and LGBTIQ+ communities, had low health literacy.

Evaluations of the latest plan will be undertaken by researchers, including those at the University of Tasmania.

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These evaluations will look at whether chronic health conditions and their risk factors are improving in Tasmania, whether the rates of these conditions are increasing or decreasing between low and higher socio economic groups, and whether better access to health resources exists.

"We will monitor short- and medium-term progress so we can review and, where necessary, improve activities to keep doing better," the report said.

"We will produce a baseline report of Tasmania's current health and wellbeing status so that we can monitor changes. An interim evaluation report will be delivered in 2023-24 and a final report in 2026-27."

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