Health Literacy - Science topic

One of the ways may be to nest a case-control like study, where you will analyse the odds of medication non-compliance with regards to participants previous characteristics and behaviours and compare between those that are compliant to those who are not.

Dear Paul,

although a little bit late, but here is a publication referencing a German translation of the HPLP-II scale:

Have you considered exploring the link between computer and information literacy of healthcare professionals on the one hand and the development of patient health literacy on the other? You can do one research on computer and information literacy of healthcare professionals and another research on health literacy of patients. You can format the questions so that certain cause-and-effect relationships can be identified in the analysis of the answers. Good luck !

Have a look at LGBTQ Business community's and Facebook pages. Regarding literacy and assessment you will have to develop your own accordingly.

Participated in your survey

Hello Sara. Using the "Newest Vital Sign" tool, you can measure health literacy in patients with HF.

In the article below, you can see how the authors used this tool in 100 patients.

contact:

Address: Swinburne University of Technology, Centre for Global Health and Equity, Hawthorne, VIC, 3125, Australia

Email: rosborne@swin.edu.au

Hello,

Mental health literacy is a very relevant topic and really not very extended in Spain.

From the University of Burgos (Spain) we have published the article "Análisis de los Programas educativos sobre alfabetización en salud mental. Revisión documental" that may be of interest to you.

In addition, in the bibliography you can find other relevant articles.

The article is available in: https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/RCED/article/view/73696

Best regards

What contingent do you plan to interview? You can also use your own copyright and create your own questionnaire, submit it for examination to an authoritative specialist or organization in this area, and after receiving a positive review, use it in your future work.

Thanks for this help :)

Very interesting topic!

Maybe you want to consult this recent review by Davaris et al.:

Further, there has been some recent research on sexual health literacy:

Kindly go through kuppuswamy index, if it works

Thank you for the hint, this is of huge help to us!

You might want check these out:

willing to collaborate. I am currently the director of a hospital providing psychiatry, deaddiction, rehabilitation and center of LD

I consider that one of the aspects that has failed in this Pandemic has been the lack of a preventive culture of the population because Health Education and Health Literacy is failing in the population because it is not included as a transcendent competence between the activities and skills that patients must be incorporated.

Health education is any combination of learning experiences designed to help individuals and communities improve their health, by increasing their knowledge or influencing their attitudes. WHO

Dear Bulcsu Szekely, thanks for your detailed reply and suggestion about this important subject.

Tina - health literacy isn't 'specific' to a specific medical condition. It is generic to all things related to illness, disease, and disability. I doubt that you will find such a tool.

Health literacy is essential not only for personal reasons but the whole society gets the benefits.

Hello Zara,

I looked up about the health literacy of support workers / carers for people with learning disability but could not find much. You may already be aware of these.

This paper (p13) mentions the topic but does no go into detail:

Emerson, E., Baines, S., Allerton, L., & Welch, V. (2010). Health inequalities and people with learning disabilities in the UK: 2010. Durham: Improving Health & Lives: Learning Disabilities Observatory, 2010.

This is the 2012 edition:

I don't know if you would gain anything by looking up the references; some are regarding specific diagnoses.

The authors made this paper available on request from RG; maybe they could help, if you contacted them?:

P.8 of this link might be relevant but again, does not go into detail:

Turner, S., & Robinson, C. (2011). Health Inequalities and People with Learning Disabilities in the UK: 2010. Improving Health and Lives: Learning Disabilities Observatory.

I looked at this report regarding Wales:

but when I tried to access reference 52, the link did not work.

All these are quite old now.

Very best wishes,

Mary

Maybe you can find some more information in this article.

https://academic.oup.com/ndt/article/33/9/1545/4643002

I will recommend you to include translators who are native speakers of target language from both medical and non-medical fields. Ideally, during expert review meeting, all translators should be present to reach consensus of any uncertainties of translations. Next, please pre-test the terms with the potential users or readers. I hope this helps.

Horst Treiblmaier Roberto Melipillan Robert Trevethan Katja Rudell Jaspreet Kaur

Thank you again to all of you who responded to this! I have now contacted one of the authors of the HLQ who is a research methodologist who specialises in the application of survey methods to public health. I also obtained his permission to share his answer with you, as I thought this may be of interest. So, here goes:

"I take from your query that you were using the default confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) approach in Amos to fit your model. This uses maximum likelihood (ML) estimation which is *not appropriate* for the HLQ items. The HLQ items have 4 and 5 point ordinal response options. CFA (and exploratory factor analysis; EFA) of ordinal data with 4 and 5 point response options should be done with weighted least squares estimation and polychoric correlations* (the appropriate method for CFA is labelled WLSMV in Mplus and DWLS (diagonally-weighted least squares) in LISREL. Either one of these specialist structural equation modeling programs should be used to analyze the kind of ordinal response data generated by the HLQ.

That said, we have recently been using Bayesian structural equation modeling (BSEM) in Mplus to analyze HLQ data. I understand that from Version 7 onwards Amos has a Bayesian CFA option and this may be appropriate for use with the HLQ. The second edition of Barbara Byrne's book "Structural Equation Modeling with AMOS: Basic Concepts, Applications and Programming" (2nd Ed., 2010) has, I believe, information on the use of Bayesian SEM in Amos. Our use of BSEM involves setting informative (small variance around zero) priors for residual correlations and cross-loadings to provide some so-called 'wriggle room' around zero for these estimates. I doubt this option would be available in AMOS, however using Bayesian analysis in AMOS should provide you with a much more appropriate approach to CFA than the Amos default ML approach.

Using SPSS for exploratory factor analysis with HLQ items is, similarly, not at all appropriate. While I would strongly recommend that you don't immediately fall back on EFA without a thorough exploration of the reasons for any poor model fit in a Bayesian CFA analysis of HLQ responses, if you do need to do an appropriate EFA there is (or was) a free-ware program available on Prof. Michael Browne's home page at the Ohio State University. The software is called 'Comprehensive Exploratory Factor Analysis' (CEFA) and is very user friendly. 

Finally, there are many appropriate factor analysis tools in R for analyzing ordinal HLQ-type data.

*Polychoric correlations are actually based on the assumption that there is a normally distributed latent variable underlying the ordinal response continuum. As I understand it polychoric correlations handle non-normally distributed ordinal data more accurately than do Pearson correlations. In our situation with non-normally distributed ordinal responses to self-report items factor analyses using polychorics and an appropriate estimator (e.g. diagonally-weighted least squares) is the best option we have available aside from a full Bayesian analysis with small-variance priors. I’m not certain whether polychoric correlations are necessary with Bayesian analysis. Mplus has the option of declaring the data CATEGORICAL for a Bayesian analysis; I’ve experiments a little with this, but have found the results very similar whether or not this option is used and have not used it routinely. I don’t know whether Amos provides a polychoric option for Bayesian analysis."

So, based on his response, we have conducted a one-model CFA with weighted least squares estimation and polychoric correlations and goodness of fit scores look much better now. We still need to run a CFA for each of the nine factors/dimensions separately, as suggested by the same research methodologist...

I'm not a expert in this field. but I agree that lack of knowledge about health is an important risk factor for individuals. I exemplify with my observations about conversations with some people living in Brazil with very low educational level. When they go to the doctor they do not know how to report the state of health in which they read and when taking the medications do not respect the dosage and doses.

Hi Bhumika Desai,

Thank you very much for sharing.@

In Asian context, you could be referred to HLS-EU-Q47 or HLS-SF12. These tools have been validated in several Asian countries in general populations, patients in general, cancer patients, and stroke patients. A group of researchers in Manipal are conducting health literacy survey using these tools.

You are welcome to join our annual conference. visit our conference website at http://7ahla2019.org/

or Asian Health Literacy Association official website: https://www.ahla-asia.org/

You could contact Prof. Hou Wen-Hsuan in TMU via https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Wen-Hsuan_Hou

Best,

Duong

For your references

Duong, T. V., Aringazina, A., Baisunova, G., Nurjanah, Pham, T. V., Pham, K. M., Truong, T. Q., Nguyen, K. T., Oo, W. M., Mohamad, E., Su, T. T., Huang, H.-L., Sørensen, K., Pelikan, J. M., Van den Broucke, S., & Chang, P. W. (2017). Measuring health literacy in Asia: Validation of the HLS-EU-Q47 survey tool in six Asian countries. Journal of Epidemiology, 27(2), 80-86. doi: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.je.2016.09.005

Duong, T. V., Aringazina, A., Baisunova, G., Nurjanah, N., Pham, T. V., Pham, K. M., Truong, T. Q., Nguyen, K. T., Oo, W. M., Su, T. T., Abdul Majid, H., Sørensen, K., Lin, I.-F., Chang, Y., Yang, S. H., & Chang, P. W. S. (2019). Development and validation of a new short-form health literacy instrument (HLS-SF12) for the general public in six Asian countries. HLRP: Health Literacy Research and Practice, 3(2), e91-e102. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3928/24748307-20190225-01

Duong, T. V., Chang, P. W., Yang, S.-H., Chen, M.-C., Chao, W.-T., Chen, T., Chiao, P., & Huang, H.-L. (2017). A new comprehensive short-form health literacy survey tool for patients in general. Asian Nursing Research, 11(1), 30-35. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anr.2017.02.001

Huang, Y., Lin, G., Lu, W., Tam, K., Chen, C., Hou, W., & Hsieh, C. (2017). Validation of the European Health Literacy Survey Questionnaire in Women With Breast Cancer. Cancer nursing. doi: https://doi.org/10.1097/NCC.0000000000000475

Shen, H.-N., Lin, C.-C., Hoffmann, T., Tsai, C.-Y., Hou, W.-H., & Kuo, K. N. (2018). The relationship between health literacy and perceived shared decision making in patients with breast cancer. Patient Educ Couns. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2018.09.017

Huang, Y.-J., Wang, Y.-L., Wu, T.-Y., Chen, C.-T., Kuo, K. N., Chen, S.-S., Hou, W.-H., & Hsieh, C.-L. (2015). Validation of the short-form Health Literacy Scale in patients with stroke. Patient Educ Couns, 98(6), 762-770. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2015.02.021

Huang, Y.-J., Chen, C.-T., Lin, G.-H., Wu, T.-Y., Chen, S.-S., Lin, L.-F., Hou, W.-H., & Hsieh, C.-L. (2017). Evaluating the European Health Literacy Survey Questionnaire in Patients with Stroke: A Latent Trait Analysis Using Rasch Modeling. The Patient - Patient-Centered Outcomes Research. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40271-017-0267-3

I wanted to attempt measuring the comprehensive health literacy of Indian cancer patients. The roadblock was a dearth of questionnaires that were relatable to the Indian context. A translation of the ones prepared in US, Europe and Australia simply do not do justice due to the vast differences in culture, delivery of healthcare, and economic and political conditions.

Instead, I went on to measure the information needs of cancer patients.

Here are some important references that would be helpful.

Also, I came across 4 Arabic health literacy tools. Here's the link:

https://healthliteracy.bu.edu/language_of_validated_version=0

Hope this helps. All the best!

You are welcome Neida Neto Vicente Ramos

I am currently working in this subject for my Phd thesis.

I think you can start off with opinion whether oral health is important? Why? Or not important?why?

Another questions on any effect of advertisment on you recommending oral healthcare products to patients?

Your welcome. Good Luck

Why did you not include health educators? They have training in health behavior as well as in research methods including the Delphi method.

Generally speaking musicians are no different to other professionals working in creative or stressful (performance) settings and so their health education requirements will be little different and should cover issues such as

- mind/body interaction

- stress and its management

- healthy lifestyle

- mental health

- help seeking

- etc etc

However, there may be one or two very specific issues

- e.g. specific stresses of performance e.g. critical solos. Mindfulness or cognitive approaches, exercise, yoga etc could all be helpful

- working in orchestras etc with strong personalities, dealing with demanding colleagues - materials on dealing the difficult people work well

- hearing damage from exposure to peak noise from instruments such as brass

I would suggest the best approach is a quick literature review, consultation with colleagues (you have many experts in regional universities), and then a brainstorm of the musician specific issues. In combination this should give you a good platform. Finally I should add that mention should be made of the health benefits of music participation as this is also an important aspect.

Best wishesm and good luck

Hi,

Maybe this questionnaire can help.

Best wishes,

Yaakov

..

All MD colleges of medicine (not sure about DO schools) are required to address in their curriculum mental and physical health, managing stress, and changing behavior. The competencies required for graduation require critical thinking skills, which are a strong focus of the various schools' curricula, no matter how differently they are structured. You might want to check with the education or pre-clinical curricular dean of a medical school in your area to discuss.

When Nutbeam developed his model of health literacy (2000), he based it on the work of critical literacy theorists Freebody and Luke (1990). It is this later work that draws on the idea that meaningful literacy education is in fact about multiple literacies that includes language and context that in turn has cultural, cognition and social effects. In effect literacy is about a reading of the world using language, visual and multimedia modes (Cope & Kalantsis, 2000), therefore it is a situated practiced.

While Nutbeam’s model of health literacy has been predominately interpreted as efficacy in following the directions of health professionals it is a rather diminished interpretation of health literacy. For health literacy to be effective it must be understood as being ‘situated’ in some social context. Here social determinants of health provide some insight into why instructions for behavior change are limited. Sometimes the prescribed behavior change doesn’t makes sense or isn’t possible in some social contexts. And I also bet it is why the WHO and the EU will come up with findings that those with lower health literacy will have lower levels of overall health.

Health literacy is a pedagogical approach that can be used in health education. By thinking about how I operate in the world, how my family culture and environment influence me, and how do the decisions and expression of power by others influence me all provide an education in health. It is this education that provides me with new insights and learning about the situated nature of health enabling me to be able to ‘read’ my world in more empowered ways. Thus Nutbeam’s (2000) position is that “health literacy as a key outcome from health education” (p.259). So they are not the same but they are both important for developing and empowering around health education.

Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (Eds.). (2000). Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures. Psychology Press.

Freebody, P., and Luke, A. (1990). “Literacies” programs: debates and demands in cultural context. Prospect 5, 7–16.

Nutbeam, D. (2000). Health literacy as a public health goal: a challenge for contemporary health education and communication strategies into the 21st century. Health Promot. Int. 15, 259–267. doi:10.1093/heapro/15.3.259

Hi Dear Dr. Laverack.

My question is about health literacy.

I'll apreciate your opinion.

Thank you.

Fábio

Dear Afkar,

The Rice & Katz (2001) published a book where they partly focus on the effect of internet on health communication but the communication and understanding as well as learning of the individual may not be so strongly related. Then in terms of the question of any actual measure measurement it seems to me that this questionnaire is not around, unless I've missed one. Have you considered forming one yourself? It seems that it would be very useful.

Good luck :)

Rice, R. E., & Katz, J. E. (2001). The Internet and health communication. The Internet and health communication: Experiences and expectations, 5-46.

When we read the answers, we can see there are several steps, several levels.

The example, possible for anybody.

The personnal counseling, precisely adapted to the background of the listener

The collective counseling with few clear messages for a group, adapted to the common specificities of the group, motivation, age, culture (Chinese, Western, etc. ) and éducation level.

The influence on media, reporters, people who communicate in companies,etc.

Convincing the politicians who can change policies.

My humble opinion is that we have to do it step by step because a policy will be contre productive if people are not ready to accept it.

You may add this one: numerical & mathematical literacy (aka numeracy), as well as a few that are suggested in the following links.

Not sure if you are familiar with the Health Literacy Tool Shed which has quite a few validated tools that may suit your needs. Check out this link: http://healthliteracy.bu.edu/chlt-30

Dumenci, L., Matsuyama, R., Riddle, D.L., Cartwright, L.A., Perera, R.A., Chung, H., Simonoff, L.A. (2014). Measurement of Cancer Health Literacy and Identification of Patients with Limited Cancer Health Literacy, Journal of Health Communication, 19(2):205-224. 

Rivera-Vasquez, O., Mabiso, A., Hammad, A., & Williams, K.P. (2009). A community-based approach to translating and testing cancer literacy assessment tools. Journal of Cancer Education, 24:319–325.

Hi 

thank you. I did find that resource and was quite helpful. 

I have interest in this the topic from a multicultural perspective with emphasis on Latino population and Legibility formulas.

Dear Chris,

Thank you indeed for guidance.

Regards

Health literacy is becoming increasingly a crucial area of importance in public health. Firstly, it provides more citizen/client/patient empowerment. Secondly, it helps in compliance with health promotion and education campaigns for prevention of disease as well as compliance with health professional advice. 

One approach that is gaining a great deal of attention is technology and social media in promoting health literacy:

Manganello, J., Gerstner, G., Pergolino, K., Graham, Y., Falisi, A., & Strogatz, D. (2016). The Relationship of Health Literacy With Use of Digital Technology for Health Information: Implications for Public Health Practice. Journal of public health management and practice: JPHMP.

These authors conclude:

"While self-report health literacy does not appear to influence access to and use of digital technologies, there is a strong association with experiences searching for health information and preferences for health information sources. Public health agencies and organizations should consider the needs and preferences of people with low health literacy when determining channels for health information dissemination. They should also consider implementing interventions to develop health information-seeking skills in populations they serve and prepare information and materials that are easily accessible and understandable."

I have decided to create my own tool for my intervention because the STOFLA didn't seem to meet my requirements. 

Hi Christina,

I do believe using the peer education model has proven to be an invaluable tool in improving health literacy as well reducing health inequality in the population. Another model is the health promotion school model.

I have attached this material for you.

Hope it helps.

Itodo.

The HLQ has several scales that cover the broad concept of empowerment 

Dear Jennifer,

The following resources might interest you:

This systematic review on eHealth Literacy may be helpful:

Stellefson, M., Hanik, B., Chaney, B., Chaney, D., Tennant, B., & Chavarria, E. A. (2011). eHealth literacy among college students: a systematic review with implications for eHealth education. Journal of medical Internet research, 13(4).

BUT Please check this review, to make sure of the psychometric properties of the instrument.

Barry, A. E., Chaney, B., Piazza-Gardner, A. K., & Chavarria, E. A. (2014). Validity and Reliability Reporting Practices in the Field of Health Education and Behavior A Review of Seven Journals. Health Education & Behavior, 41(1), 12-18.

Abstract: Health education and behavior researchers and practitioners often develop, adapt, or adopt surveys/scales to quantify and measure cognitive, behavioral, emotional, and psychosocial characteristics. To ensure the integrity of data collected from these scales, it is vital that psychometric properties (i.e., validity and reliability) be assessed. The purpose of this investigation was to (a) determine the frequency with which published articles appearing in health education and behavior journals report the psychometric properties of the scales/subscales employed and (b) outline the methods used to determine the reliability and validity of the scores produced. The results reported herein are based on a final sample of 967 published articles, spanning seven prominent health education and behavior journals between 2007 and 2010. Of the 967 articles examined, an exceedingly high percentage failed to report any validity (ranging from 40% to 93%) or reliability (ranging from 35% to 80%) statistics in their articles. For health education/behavior practitioners and researchers to maximize the utility and applicability of their findings, they must evaluate the psychometric properties of the instrument employed, a practice that is currently underrepresented in the literature. By not ensuring the instruments employed in a given study were able to produce accurate and consistent scores, researchers cannot be certain they actually measured the behaviors and/or constructs reported.

Good health literacy means to always seek information! Good health literacy is knowing how and where to seek the best information! Good health literacy is knowing how to use the information (what to do with it, how to apply it, etcetera). Dr Carlos Rivas Echeverria, MD, PhD, FACP

Having undertaken several studies with older people and those with dementia - it has been good practice to use family members, carers and key social workers along to support any interviews. There is usually a deal of interpretation to undertake to arrive at an emerging theme.

In one study my reearchers used peers in the community (a group called older peoples voice) to help in data gathering

I have two studies available for download in researchgate you may wish to look at:

The Implementation of the Gold Standards Framework within Five Care Settings in Greater Manchester evaluation report 2008 executive summary.

on: 

Also: Knowsley Partnerships for Older People (POPPs) Final Evaluation Report

on: 

I agree with Brenda. Additionally,  the theory of Reasoned Action and Planned Behavior also best explains individual related health behaviors in relation to knowledge gained. Here is another interesting article on Condom use by Dolores et al. Web link  http://digitalcommons.uconn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=chip_docs

Hi Cynthia,

here are some articles that may help

 Cha, Eunseok1; Kim, Kevin H.2; Lerner, Hannah M.3; Dawkins, Colleen R.4; Bello, Morenike K.5; Umpierrez, Guillermo6; Dunbar, Sandra B. Health Literacy, Self-efficacy, Food Label Use, and Diet in Young Adults

Rachel Cooke, Angeliki Papadak. Nutrition label use mediates the positive relationship between nutrition knowledge and attitudes towards healthy eating with dietary quality among university students in the UK

Ryan, Michael P.; Costello-White, Reagan N. Confirming and Correcting Preconceptions: Health Literacy as Adaptive Comprehension

Inge Spronk, Catriona Kullen, Catriona A. Burdon, Helen T. O'Connor

Relationship between nutrition knowledge and

dietary intake

This is an interesting conversation about health literacy. I personally feel much of the responsibility for educating patients falls on the health care providers. There are many excellent tools to raise awareness of the issues and I though I would share a few here. Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company, has been a huge advocate for Clear Health Communication for years and I applaud their efforts. They have a new tool, A Health Literacy Assessment Tool for Patient Care and Research called the Newest Vital Sign (NVS) available in English & Spanish. It helps providers assess what the patient knows, and then using some of their clear health communication skills (in the link provided) we as health professionals can work to better communicate and get feedback on what the patient understands about their illness and any treatment options we are recommending.

The American Medical Association has a really powerful video on health literacy in America. Watch it to really see what we are missing by not looking for health literacy, it's been around for a while, but wow. (Every time I watch it I am moved by the impact of health literacy on patients.) We should never assume anything, plain language is important and it is not the patient's responsibility to tell us they "don't get it", because they will not. Providers need to think about this issue and I am glad it is being discussed here. There are great resources out there.

You are welcome.

Diana.

Here is the website for all RAND survey tools (available to public): http://www.rand.org/health/surveys_tools.html

(validation should be OK with RAND).

Another directory is from North Central University:

(Validation status not recorded though)

Great postings. I work with eating disorders and the percentage of people suffering from anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN) specifically are very low. BN because people are embarrassed of symptoms and often function well despite them and much suffering that they hide. AN because the disorder is egosytonic. If they want to lose weight and know that therapy will involve weight gain, they're not going to "undo all their hard work". Mostly people with AN are referred by worried family members or school counsellors and actively resist at least at the beginning.

Here are some examples of papers about adapting health literacy measures for different countries and cultures:

• Ndahura, N. B. (2012). Nutrition literacy status of adolescent students in Kampala district, Uganda.

• Patel, P., Panaich, S., Steinberg, J., Zalawadiya, S., Kumar, A., Aranha, A., & Cardozo, L. (2013). Use of nutrition literacy scale in elderly minority population. The journal of nutrition, health & aging, 17(10), 894-897.

• Sampaio, H. A. D. C., Silva, D. M. D. A., Sabry, M. O. D., Carioca, A. A. F., & Chayb, A. P. V. (2013). Letramento nutricional: desempenho de dois grupos populacionais brasileiros; Nutrition literacy: performance of two Brazilian population groups. Nutrire Rev. Soc. Bras. Aliment. Nutr, 38(2).

Or look at the ways Newest Vital Sign (NVS) has been modified for use in different countries or language groups. The NVS is available in both English and Spanish versions as well as a validated UK-specific version, NVS-UK. Available from: http://www.pfizer.com/health/literacy/public_policy_researchers/nvs_toolkit

Hi Mohammad,

Interesting question - but i think that health information seeking will have little direct short-medium term impact on health literacy. I think that the converse is more likely where health literacy impacts on health information seeking. To what extent is the question and leads us to the chasm of what's being done to address poor health literacy across the globe.

FCCHL (Fransen., Van Schaik, Twickler y Essink-Bot, 2011).

Hi Charlotte,

thanks for your comments. As you know, three dimensions or levels of health literacy were identified: functional (where is icluded the numeracy capability you pointed about), interactive and critical. 

In my opinion, it is necessary to take into account these dimensios in the design of assesment tools and interventions. In our mobile application, we ask the user, after use, to perform what they learned. For example, accesing and request a medical appointment. At the same time, the app returns information, thus having objective data of user empowerment. 

Written information, especially if autoinformed, has its drawbacks and limations.

Greetings.

Social media has a huge potential to improve health literacy, especially in the young people.

60% of the internet users access social media related to health (The Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2009 ). It's well known that the majority of the internet users are the young population.

Potential for anonymity is an advantage to the individuals when coming to the usage of social media. This helps them in opening up more and asking questions and thereby improve their understanding and knowledge about their health.

Two strategies of social media that can be used to improve the health literacy in young people are:

Social Marketing : where the product is health or a change in lifestyle can also be used for changing health behaviours. It can also limit or erase psychological, social and practical barriers to health behaviour.

Social influence: an important driver of behaviour and hence peer to peer and social network communications of campaign messages brings about a huge difference.

So, social media is an untapped treasure holding a huge potential for improving health literacy of the population ,especially the young people.

Sahifa: Here is one from U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

You may wish to use the Short Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults (S-TOFHLA). This is mentioned in an article published in the journal Progress in Transplantation, 2009, 19(1), 25-34.

In addition there is now an increasing interest in this topic and the following web site may also be of interest http://www.healthliteracyeurope.net

Pls refer instrument developed from deakin university Australia.. may be it could help you

Courtney, are you looking for planning models or health behavior theory? For a planning model, consider social marketing (also called public health marketing) that uses formative research to identify barriers and motivators to a desired behavior and then uses commercial marketing concepts like products/services, pricing, distribution, and promotion to develop behavior change strategies. For health behavior models I'm wondering if the health belief model would be appropriate given that it considers perceived susceptibility? Do members of the target population see themselves as being at risk?

Additional references with several public policy implications and an overview on the current state of social media use in the health sector:

Harris, J. K., Mueller, N. L., & Snider, D. (2013). Social media adoption in local health departments nationwide. American journal of public health, 103(9), 1700-1707.

Andersen, K. N., Medaglia, R., & Henriksen, H. Z. (2012). Social media in public health care: Impact domain propositions. Government Information Quarterly, 29(4), 462-469.

Park, H., Rodgers, S., & Stemmle, J. (2011). Health organizations’ use of Facebook for health advertising and promotion. Journal of interactive advertising, 12(1), 62-77.

Hope this helps.

This answer is self-serving. Nevertheless we (Stanford) have been working with these populations around the word for years with or various chronic disease and caregiver self-management programs. Many of these are given in conjunction with primary care, patienteducation.stanford.edu They have now reached 200,000 people in the United States and have numerous publications .

Beyond the Stanford programs there are a suite of evidence based programs, (health behavior and or health status outcomes, published, and translated into practice beyond the study site) More about these on the Agency for Community Living site. These programs are usually offered by community organizations from the YMCA to the Area Agencies on Aging. (Enhanced Wellness, Enhanced Fitness, Matter of Balance, Fit and Strong, PEARLS and Healthy Ideas for depression, and med reconciliation.

If we really want to improve health literacy it needs to be a community affair and while primary care can do a lot, the most important role is probably to refer to what is already existing or to work in partnership with community agencies. People like to learn in their own communities in comfortable settings.

One last point. Just because someone has low literacy does not mean they have low intelligence.

Kate

"What Should be done?"

In my opinion incorporating basic principles of health education in all levels of education and, stablished one multidisciplinar approach in under-graduated health profissionals

I recomend you to take a look to this method: Concept Mapping. We are using for different research projects and it helps to represent, order and understand the ideas of people participating.

I would suggest

Barkway, P., Mosel, K., Simpson, A., Oster, C. and Muir-Cochrane, E.C. (2012). Consumer and carer consultants in mental health: The formation of their role identity. Advances in Mental Health, 10(2), pp.157-168. [online]. http://dx.doi.org/10.5172/jamh.2011.10.2.

I have a different spin. I think there are two different and competing conceptions of health communication. One, and this appears to be the kind of programme your colleague is referring to, is very similar to health promotion. The other could perhaps also be considered as communication in health(care), which is focussed on communication, and to enhance quality of care, which might eventually promote better health, but is first and foremost about communication as a process, and usually interpersonal communication.

This confusion is most manifest in two journals from the same publisher: Health Communication and Journal of Health Communication, each of which takes one of those perspectives.