Challenges and Implications of Health Literacy in Global Health Care

2019 ◽  
pp. 185-197
Author(s):  
Kijpokin Kasemsap
Keyword(s):  
Health Literacy ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Cost Savings ◽  
Healthcare Systems ◽  
Health Costs ◽  
Healthcare Organizations ◽  
Global Health Care ◽  
Healthcare Efficiency ◽  
Barriers To Health ◽  
Use Of Health Services

This chapter explains the perspectives on health literacy, trends and issues with health literacy, and the challenges and implications of health literacy in global healthcare. Health literacy concerns the knowledge and competences of patient to meet the complex demands of health in modern healthcare. Providing effective patient information means acknowledging, understanding, and overcoming barriers to health literacy that physicians, health professionals, and patients might experience. Health literacy affects health behavior and the use of health services, thus affecting health outcomes and health costs in the healthcare organizations. The benefits of health literacy improvement include improved communication, greater adherence to treatment, greater ability to engage in self-care, improved health status, greater healthcare efficiency, and cost savings to the healthcare systems.

Challenges and Implications of Health Literacy in Global Health Care

2018 ◽  
pp. 3734-3744 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kijpokin Kasemsap
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Literacy ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Health Care Systems ◽  
Cost Savings ◽  
Modern Health Care ◽  
Care Systems ◽  
Global Health Care ◽  
Care Health ◽  
Barriers To Health

This article explains the perspectives on health literacy; trends and issues with health literacy; and the challenges and implications of health literacy in global health care. Health literacy concerns the knowledge and competences of patient to meet the complex demands of health in modern health care. Providing effective patient information means acknowledging, understanding, and overcoming barriers to health literacy that physicians, health professionals, and patients might experience. Health literacy affects health behavior and the use of health services, thus affecting health outcomes and health costs in the health care organizations. The benefits of health literacy improvement include improved communication, greater adherence to treatment, greater ability to engage in self-care, improved health status, greater health care efficiency, and cost savings to the health care systems.

Promoting Health Literacy in Global Health Care

2017 ◽  
pp. 485-506 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kijpokin Kasemsap
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Literacy ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Health Communication ◽  
Health Information ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Good Health ◽  
Health Literacy Level ◽  
Global Health Care ◽  
Literacy Level

This chapter emphasizes the prospect of health literacy; the evaluation of health literacy level; health literacy and health communication; health literacy and health information; and the current issues of health literacy in global health care. Good health literacy is important because patients are living longer and experiencing a wider range of health issues. Health professionals must commit to promoting for improved health literacy in health care organizations and should establish the specific health care goals toward improving health literacy in strategic plans, performance plans, programs, and educational initiatives. Health professionals can utilize a broad range of health communication strategies to ensure patients understand their options and share their health care decisions. Through health education and training, effective health information can help promote patients' health literacy level in global health care.

Health Literacy

2020 ◽  
pp. 32-53
Author(s):  
Elaine Wittenberg ◽  
Joy V. Goldsmith ◽  
Sandra L. Ragan ◽  
Terri Ann Parnell
Keyword(s):  
Health Literacy ◽  
Healthcare Providers ◽  
Healthcare Systems ◽  
Literacy Skills ◽  
Healthcare Organizations ◽  
Caregiver Health ◽  
Care Recipients ◽  
Centered Care ◽  
Family Centered ◽  
Collaborative Efforts

Caregivers require the skills needed to support complex medical conditions and utilize opportunities to access, understand, and share reliable health information with care recipients to advocate for successful disease management and decisions. This chapter addresses the unique characteristics of caregiver health literacy and the burden of navigating increasingly complex healthcare systems. The connection and consequence between health literacy and social determinants of health upon caregiving, the implications of caregiver health literacy skills, and the influence of culturally and linguistically appropriate standards on enhanced caregiver health literacy, clear communication, and family-centered care are discussed. Health literacy involves not only caregivers’ and patients’ cognitive and functional skills, but also the collaborative efforts among patients, caregivers, healthcare organizations, healthcare providers, and communities. This collaborative view of health literacy underscores the synergy among healthcare recipients, formal and informal healthcare providers, and resources from healthcare systems to reduce health literacy barriers, ease communication burden, and lessen inequities in health.

Promoting Health Literacy in Global Health Care

2016 ◽  
pp. 242-263
Author(s):  
Kijpokin Kasemsap
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Literacy ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Health Communication ◽  
Health Information ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Good Health ◽  
Health Literacy Level ◽  
Global Health Care ◽  
Literacy Level

This chapter emphasizes the prospect of health literacy; the evaluation of health literacy level; health literacy and health communication; health literacy and health information; and the current issues of health literacy in global health care. Good health literacy is important because patients are living longer and experiencing a wider range of health issues. Health professionals must commit to promoting for improved health literacy in health care organizations and should establish the specific health care goals toward improving health literacy in strategic plans, performance plans, programs, and educational initiatives. Health professionals can utilize a broad range of health communication strategies to ensure patients understand their options and share their health care decisions. Through health education and training, effective health information can help promote patients' health literacy level in global health care.

scholarly journals Literacy and health literacy - why they matter to health professionals

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (16) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
Debra B. Reed
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Literacy ◽  
Health Education ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Health Costs ◽  
Low Literacy ◽  
Reading Levels ◽  
Low Health Literacy ◽  
Health Education Materials

Low literacy and low health literacy affect people in all demographic strata and interfere with patients’ abilities to understand and act on information provided by health careproviders. Many print health education materials are written at reading levels well above those recommended. Thus, compliance to health messages is compromised, and health costs are increased. As medicine moves into new fields such as precision medicine, effective communication between patients and health care professionals becomes even more challenging and important.

Māori Research(er) in Three Poems

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
Jacquie Kidd
Keyword(s):  
Palliative Care ◽  
Health Literacy ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Bell Hooks ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Third ◽  
Ruth Behar ◽  
Seeking Help

These three poems re-present the findings from a research project that took place in 2013 (Kidd et al. 2018, Kidd et al. 2014). The research explored what health literacy meant for Māori patients and whānau when they accessed palliative care. Through face-to-face interviews and focus groups we engaged with 81 people including patients, whānau, bereaved loved ones, support workers and health professionals. The poems are composite, written to bring some of our themes to life. The first poem is titled Aue. This is a Māori lament that aligns to English words such as ‘oh no’, or ‘arrgh’, or ‘awww’. Each stanza of the poem re-presents some of the stories we heard throughout the research. The second poem is called Tikanga. This is a Māori concept that encompasses customs, traditions and protocols. There are tikanga rituals and processes that guide all aspects of life, death, and relationships. This poem was inspired by an elderly man who explained that he would avoid seeking help from a hospice because ‘they leave tikanga at the door at those places’. His choice was to bear his pain bravely, with pride, within his cultural identity. The third poem is called ‘People Like Me’. This is an autoethnographical reflection of what I experienced as a researcher which draws on the work of scholars such as bell hooks (1984), Laurel Richardson (1997) and Ruth Behar (1996). These and many other authors encourage researchers to use frustration and anger to inform our writing; to use our tears to fuel our need to publish our research.

Semantic Health Mediation and Access Control Manager for Interoperability Among Healthcare Systems

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 87-98
Author(s):  
Abdullah Alamri
Keyword(s):  
Medical Information ◽  
Clinical Information ◽  
Healthcare Systems ◽  
Patient Data ◽  
Dual Model ◽  
Healthcare Organizations ◽  
Reference Information ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Semantic Mediation

Healthcare systems have evolved to become more patient-centric. Many efforts have been made to transform paper-based patient data to automated medical information by developing electronic healthcare records (EHRs). Several international EHRs standards have been enabling healthcare interoperability and communication among a wide variety of medical centres. It is a dual-model methodology which comprises a reference information model and an archetype model. The archetype is responsible for the definition of clinical concepts which has limitations in terms of supporting complex reasoning and knowledge discovery requirements. The objective of this article is to propose a semantic-mediation architecture to support semantic interoperability among healthcare organizations. It provides an intermediate semantic layer to exploit clinical information based on richer ontological representations to create a “model of meaning” for enabling semantic mediation. The proposed model also provides secure mechanisms to allow interoperable sharing of patient data between healthcare organizations.

scholarly journals Preoperative bariatric surgery programme barriers facing Pacific patients in Auckland, New Zealand as perceived by health sector professionals: a qualitative study

BMJ Open ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. e029525
Author(s):  
Tamasin Taylor ◽  
Wendy Wrapson ◽  
Ofa Dewes ◽  
Nalei Taufa ◽  
Richard J Siegert
Keyword(s):  
Bariatric Surgery ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Health Literacy ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Publicly Funded ◽  
Attrition Rates ◽  
Pacific Health ◽  
Emotional Safety ◽  
Minority Ethnic

Minority ethnic patient groups typically have the highest bariatric surgery preoperative attrition rates and lowest surgery utilisation worldwide. Eligible patients of Pacific Island ethnicity (Pacific patients) in New Zealand (NZ) follow this wider trend.ObjectivesThe present study explored structural barriers contributing to Pacific patients’ disproportionately high preoperative attrition rates from publicly-funded bariatric surgery in Auckland, NZ.SettingPublicly-funded bariatric surgery programmes based in the wider Auckland area, NZ.DesignSemi-structured interviews with health sector professionals (n=21) were conducted.Data were analysed using an inductive thematic approach.ResultsTwo primary themes were identified: (1) Confidence negotiating the medical system, which included Emotional safety in clinical settings and Relating to non-Pacific health professionals and (2) Appropriate support to achieve preoperative goals, which included Cultural considerations, Practical support and Relating health information. Clinical environments and an under-representation of Pacific staff were considered to be barriers to developing emotional safety, trust and acceptance of the surgery process with patients and their families. Additionally, economic deprivation and lower health literacy impacted preoperative goals.ConclusionsHealth professionals’ accounts indicated that Pacific patients face substantial levels of disconnection in bariatric surgery programmes. Increasing representation of Pacific ethnicity by employing more Pacific health professionals in bariatric teams and finding novel solutions to implement preoperative programme components have the potential to reduce this disconnect. Addressing cultural competency of staff, increasing consultancy times and working in community settings may enable staff to better support Pacific patients and their families. Programme structures could be more accommodating to practical barriers of attending appointments, managing patients’ preoperative health goals and improving patients’ health literacy. Given that Pacific populations, and other patients from minority ethnic backgrounds living globally, also face high rates of obesity and barriers accessing bariatric surgery, our findings are likely to have broader applicability.

scholarly journals Use of symptom checkers for COVID-19-related symptoms among university students: a qualitative study

2021 ◽  
pp. bmjinnov-2020-000498
Author(s):  
Stephanie Aboueid ◽  
Samantha B Meyer ◽  
James R Wallace ◽  
Shreya Mahajan ◽  
Teeyaa Nur ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Healthcare Services ◽  
Healthcare Systems ◽  
Positive Experience ◽  
Perceived Credibility ◽  
Inductive Thematic Analysis

ObjectiveSymptom checkers are potentially beneficial tools during pandemics. To increase the use of the platform, perspectives of end users must be gathered. Our objectives were to understand the perspectives and experiences of young adults related to the use of symptom checkers for assessing COVID-19-related symptoms and to identify areas for improvement.MethodsWe conducted semistructured qualitative interviews with 22 young adults (18–34 years of age) at a university in Ontario, Canada. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analysed using inductive thematic analysis.ResultsWe identified six main themes related to the decision of using a symptom checker for COVID-19 symptoms: (1) presence of symptoms or a combination of symptoms, (2) knowledge about COVID-19 symptoms, (3) fear of seeking in-person healthcare services, (4) awareness about symptom checkers, (5) paranoia and (6) curiosity. Participants who used symptom checkers shared by governmental entities reported an overall positive experience. Individuals who used non-credible sources reported suboptimal experiences due to lack of perceived credibility. Five main areas for improvement were identified: (1) information about the creators of the platform, (2) explanation of symptoms, (3) personalised experience, (4) language options, and (5) option to get tested.ConclusionsThis study suggests an increased acceptance of symptom checkers due to the perceived risks of infection associated with seeking in-person healthcare services. Symptom checkers have the potential to reduce the burden on healthcare systems and health professionals, especially during pandemics; however, these platforms could be improved to increase use.

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