School of Public Health

Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/1633

The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.

Note: Prior to July 1, 2007, the School of Public Health was named the College of Health & Human Performance.

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Subject: search.filters.subject.health literacy

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Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Parental Health Literacy, Empowerment, and Advocacy in the Context of Food Allergies Management in Schools
    (2021) Koo, Laura Warnock; Baur, Cynthia E; Horowitz, Alice M; Public and Community Health; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Background: Health literacy, empowerment, and advocacy may be important for parents when they communicate with schools related management of their child’s food allergies. Understanding prevention and emergency management of life-threatening food allergies may require high levels of health literacy and may be overwhelming to parents. Yet, parents are often the drivers of school food allergy safety practices. Mixed evidence supports the relationships among communicative health literacy, critical health literacy, and empowerment in chronic disease management. Objective: This cross-sectional study examines the relationships among parental health literacy, particularly communicative and critical health literacy; empowerment; and advocacy in the context of food allergies management in elementary schools. Methods: Parents of children with food allergies were recruited through food allergy organizations to complete an anonymous 20-minute online survey. Measurements of parental health literacy, empowerment, and advocacy were adapted from validated scales or the literature and refined through pre-testing and pilot-testing. Results: Participants (N=313) were predominantly white, college-educated mothers with moderately high food allergy knowledge, health literacy, and empowerment. Their children were allergic to an average of three food allergens and nearly half had asthma. Parents who scored at the highest levels on measures of communicative health literacy, critical health literacy, and empowerment engaged in advocacy behaviors perceived to be more effective than parents who scored at the lowest levels. However, this statistical difference may not represent a clinically significant difference. Communicative and critical health literacy were not more strongly associated with advocacy than functional health literacy. Empowerment and quality of the parents’ relationship with the school were the strongest predictors of the parents’ perceived effectiveness of advocacy efforts. The relationship between parental health literacy and advocacy was mediated by empowerment with a moderate effect size, but reverse causality between health literacy and empowerment could not be completely ruled out. Conclusions: Parental health literacy may impact the effectiveness of advocacy efforts for safe food allergies practices in schools, with parental empowerment possibly mediating the relationship between health literacy and advocacy. Longitudinal studies with diverse samples should verify findings. Health professionals should encourage parents to build good relationships with school personnel and help to empower families when educating them about food allergies management.
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    “It’s Got to Be on This Page”: Age and Cognitive Style in a Study of Online Health Information Seeking
    (2015) Agree, Emily M.; King, Abby C.; Castro, Cynthia M.; Wiley, Adrienne; Borzekowski, Dina L. G.
    Background: The extensive availability of online health information offers the public opportunities to become independently informed about their care, but what affects the successful retrieval and understanding of accurate and detailed information? We have limited knowledge about the ways individuals use the Internet and the personal characteristics that affect online health literacy. Objective: This study examined the extent to which age and cognitive style predicted success in searching for online health information, controlling for differences in education, daily Internet use, and general health literacy. Methods: The Online Health Study (OHS) was conducted at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Stanford University School of Medicine from April 2009 to June 2010. The OHS was designed to explore the factors associated with success in obtaining health information across different age groups. A total of 346 men and women aged 35 years and older of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds participated in the study. Participants were evaluated for success in searching online for answers to health-related tasks/questions on nutrition, cancer, alternative medicine, vaccinations, medical equipment, and genetic testing. Results: Cognitive style, in terms of context sensitivity, was associated with less success in obtaining online health information, with tasks involving visual judgment most affected. In addition, better health literacy was positively associated with overall success in online health seeking, specifically for tasks requiring prior health knowledge. The oldest searchers were disadvantaged even after controlling for education, Internet use, general health literacy, and cognitive style, especially when spatial tasks such as mapping were involved. Conclusions: The increasing availability of online health information provides opportunities to improve patient education and knowledge, but effective use of these resources depends on online health literacy. Greater support for those who are in the oldest cohorts and for design of interfaces that support users with different cognitive styles may be required in an age of shared medical decision making.
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    A Review and Report of Community-based Health Literacy Interventions
    (National Academy of Sciences, 2017-07-19) Baur, Cynthia; Martinez, Lourdes M.; Tchangalova, Nedelina; Rubin, Don
    BACKGROUND: A scoping literature review was conducted to identify and describe the state-of the-art of community-based health literacy interventions. “Health literacy” and “community” were the core concepts used to identify relevant interventions for review and analysis. “Health literacy,” “community” and “community-based” are terms with a range of meanings, and the review aimed to find and report those interventions that intentionally brought together groups of people to participate in an intervention that addressed health literacy issues or tried to change health literacy skills, behaviors, status, or other outcomes as defined by researchers. METHODS: Literature searching was conducted using PubMed, selected EBSCO and Proquest databases, as well as Web of Science for relevant studies. Grey literature was searched on web sites to identify eligible community-based programs. Search results were limited to English publications from June 2010 to 2017, however no limit was applied to geographical location, participants, health topic, or intervention type. Two authors screened titles and abstracts and identified 170 references suitable for full-text analysis. Papers were reviewed using a standard template with descriptive categories about the intervention; and criteria from the CDC “Best Practices” for evidence-based practices and Guide to Community Preventive Services study designs. RESULTS: Of the 2,402 papers located with the search strategy, 74 papers met the inclusion criteria. Of the included papers, 55 reported that intervention communities were selected because of health literacy concerns; 63 reported that health literacy principles or techniques were used for content or program development; 54 used health literacy measures; and 53 included health literacy outcome information. Only two papers reported large magnitude effects. CONCLUSIONS: A wide range of community-based health literacy interventions provide qualitative and quantitative evidence of positive outcomes; knowledge change was the most common outcome. Interventions can be strengthened in a number of ways to continue to build the body of knowledge about when and how to best address health literacy in community interventions.