Communicating with migrants: children’s health literacy, digital technology, health promotion tools
Abstract Background Being a migrant can enact road blocks in the process of integration, if language barriers persist in the communication between health professionals and migrants. Moreover, health literacy levels (HL) can differ, based on different cultural contexts or conceptions of health and illness. This research aims at exploring migrants (digital) HL and the mediating role of migrant’s children in primary health care setting. Health professionals’ resort to migrants’ children as interpreters and mediators has been highlighted with the younger generations’ digital literacy, as critical tools to overcome such barriers. Assessing and promoting migrant’s HL is a public health mandate in the promotion of individual and family health to establish a common ground base for communication. Methods A qualitative and ethnographic study based on narratives, participant observation, focus group and ethno biographic interviews with nurses, migrants, medical doctors and intercultural mediators, involved 52 participants in a primary health care setting in Santarém district, Portugal. Partnership with the Observatory for Migration, the High Commission for Migration (ACM) and with migrant associations, enabled the completion by migrants of an online questionnaire focusing on digital HL. Results Migrants’ children were identified as facilitators in the clinical setting at three levels: the communication, HL promotion and adherence to continuity of care. Conclusions Improve migrant’s HL and health decisions is feasible when considering several strategies to overcome cultural barriers. Migrants’ children are potential mediators in the process of communication between health professionals and adults. Awareness of their potential allows adjustments in the primary health care sector. The need to further investigate migrants’ HL and digital HL (e.g. telephone translation services, Internet-based tools for scheduling health appointments) are some tasks that need further research.