Category Archives: Health information literacy

Visiting Australian researchers

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ASIST 2019 conference was organised in Melbourne in the end of October 2019. Members of HIBA participated this conference, but as you travel so far from Finland, it also makes sense to visit local researchers that work on topics interesting to HIBA. Luckily, I had an opportunity to do exactly this.

SYDNEY

In Sydney I visited professor Kirsten McCaffery, the leader of Health Literacy Lab in the University of Sydney. They are a research group at the University of Sydney School of Public Health.

University of Sydney

Furthermore, I spend a day with the faculty members of IKM and Digital Studies Program, University of Technology Sydney (UTS). I had the priviledge to have Senior lecturer Bhuva Narayan as my host for this visit. The discussions varied from differences of countries statuses in eHealth, research on older adults to teaching Information Studies related topics.

Bhuva and Heidi and inspiring discussions!

UTS, University of Technology Sydney

WOLLONGONG

In Wollongong I was taken a good care by the faculty members of Centre for Persuasive Technology and Society, in University of Wollongong. During a two day visit I also met local PhD students.

Workshop together with local PhD students

CANBERRA

In Canberra I met several researchers from Australian National University (ANU).

From ANU Institute for Communication in Health Care professor Diana Slade kindly found time to chat with me about the research done in their research group and in HIBA.

I also had lively discussion with Associate Professor Hanna Suominen, originally from Turku. The topics varied from strategic Our Health in Our Hands research initiate to differences of doing research and living in Finland and in Australia.

Enthusiastic visitor

Dr Ying-Hsang Liu showed me kindly around the campus and Canberra and future research topics were invented e.g., over a lovely japanese dinner.

Heidi and Ying-Hsang

MELBOURNE

Before the conference, and arrival of HIBA colleagues Kristina and Noora, I had a really nice unofficial breakfast meeting with Rebecca French from Victorian Health Promotion Foundation.

Meeting Rebecca

During my visit, in addition to researchers, I also saw a lot of beautiful landscapes, big cities and also some native animals 🙂 Overall the trip was a success!

Wallabi said Hi!

MIE and VITALIS in Gothenburg, April 2018

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Medical Informatics Europe (MIE) conference was arranged in Gothenburg, Sweden in 24.-26.4.2018. At the same time Scandinavian eHealth event, VITALIS, took place in the same premises.

MIE covers a wide range of topics relating to medical informatics – from health literacy, different eHealth tools to data mining.

The first MIE was hosted in Cambridge, UK in 1978 and therefore MIE2018 marked the 40th anniversary for the conference. MIE2018 offered around 200 oral and 150 poster presentations. In addition, there were around 50 workshops, demonstrations and tutorials to attend to.

MIE2018 and Vitalis

Tuesday started early with a set of sessions and workshops. From HIBA research group Heidi Enwald was one of the organizers and presenters of the workshop “Re-defining eHealth Literacy for the 21st century. Discussing the evolution of the concept from different perspectives”.

In the workshop and, also afterwards, different definitions and measures of eHealth literacy were discussed. It was seen that we also need to get forward from discussing these issues; we need to identify what differentiates eHealth literacy from other health related literacy concepts, what are the future skills and abilities that relate to this concept and how should they be addressed. Heidi Enwald represents HIBA group in eHealth literacy network that continues discussion around the topic.

After Opening ceremony a Keynote speech was given by Patricia Flatley Brennan, the director of National Library of Medicine.

Keynote speech by Patricia Brennan

She spoke, among other things, about data-powered health that includes optimizing medication effectiveness, more efficient pathogen detection and targeted therapies. She mentioned that the nature of evidence in evidence-based medicine is also about to change. Furthermore, data does not take care of itself and therefore, e.g., data savvy librarians are needed.

As mentioned, MIE2018 provided many overlapping sessions to choose from and the decision was not always easy. Aging did not rise as a topic in many presentations, but there were some. For instance, Madeleine Blusi from Umeå University talked about aging in rural areas and their project that utilizes participatory design and attempts to create a service for including aged people into social activities they would otherwise no longer be able to join.

Madeleine Blusi from Umeå University

The VITALIS exhibition area was also available to visit by the participants of MIE2018.

Several kind of meetings were made possible by MIE2018 and VITALIS

The exhibition mostly contained booths of Swedish eHealth companies and made possible also the discussions between, e.g., researchers and advocates of industry.

The proceedings book of the conference is open access and can be found from the website:

https://mie2018.org/home/proceedings/

Current research in health information literacy research

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Isto, Noora and Heidi from HIBA project participated in the 5th European Conference in Information Literacy in Saint-Malo, France. All were a part of the Health Information Literacy Special Session organised by Anne-Kathrin Mayer (ZIPD, Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information) and Maija-Leena Huotari (University of Oulu).

In the session, Veronika Kuhberg-Lasson (ZIPD) discussed the health information literacy knowledge (HILK) of students from vocational schools in Germany. According to the study, lower education lead to lower HILK with no significant differences between vocations. However, when tested for personality differences, the authors suggested that instead of the level of education, the use of untrustworthy information sources might be related to higher levels of extraversion.

Heidi presented a paper on the Relationship between Everyday Health Information Literacy and Attitudes towards Mobile Technology among Older People, a cooperation between researchers participating in the HIBA project, Oulu Deaconess Institute and the University of Oulu. The study investigated how everyday health information literacy (EHIL) was related to the use of traditional and advanced mobile information technologies, and how older adults felt about the use of advanced mobile technologies (i.e. smart phones, tablet computers). Regarding their EHIL, only 28% felt that it is easy to access reliable health information from the Internet. A minority had used advanced mobile information technologies, but the attitudes in the group of respondents were generally rather positive. The findings showed that confidence and positive opinions on EHIL had more positive opinions on mobile information technology. The study suggests that older adults with different levels of EHIL should be engaged in the development of new mobile information technologies.

Noora presented a paper related to EHIL together with Teija Keränen and Maija-Leena Huotari titled Examining the Applicability of the Everyday Health Information Literacy Screening Tool in the Context of Energy. In the study, The factorial structure of the EHIL screening tool modified for energy information was similar to the original tool. The tool can be used to find individuals who lack motivation or have difficulties in finding or evaluating information.

Anna-Maija Huhta (University of Oulu), who has previously worked in HIBA project, presented a co-authored paper Concepts Related to Health Literacy in Online Information Environments: A Systematic Review. Huhta and her colleagues had conducted a review of how information is approached in various health related literacy concepts. Majority of the analysed texts were written in medical and health sciences. The most common concepts were health literacy, ehealth literacy, health information literacy, and (everyday) health information literacy. Similar to all definitions was that all focussed on the ability to understand, comprehend and use information but also to use information as a tool. Differences related to the role of prior knowledge, information needs, critical evaluation of information and types of information considered.

Sigríður Björk Einarsdóttir and Ágústa Pálsdóttir had investigated the health information literacy of parents of children with a disability or long-term illness using qualitative interview study. The authors conclusion was that information seeking takes time and especially with information that should be easily available, takes time and effort.

Finally, Anne-Kathrin Mayer (presented by Veronika Kuhberg-Lasson) investigated the different approaches to measuring information literacy skills. The authors had found discrepancies between objective and subjective measures, and suggested further research on their causes and relations to other factors.

As a whole, the presentations show that it is not uncomplicated to measure and study health information literacy and to say what should be measured and how. Appropriate practices, confidence and good outcomes depend on multiple factors — as their lack of. At the same time, it seems that it is possible to develop scales that can be useful as proxies of certain constellations of practices to understand better how people interact with health information.

2017-09-20 at 2 58 pm: Sheila Webber live blogged the session at http://information-literacy.blogspot.se/2017/09/health-information-literacy-session-pam.html

ZPID Symposium – Health Literacy Across the Life Span

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Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information, ZPID organized a one day symposium “Health Literacy Across the Life Span” at 10th of March 2017. The day included interesting speakers from Germany and Finland from multiple backgrounds. The symposium was intentionally kept as small-scale and the aim was to sustain discussion and possible future collaboration.

Renate Soellner from University of Hildesmein, Germany told about research project ”Health competence – model building and validation”. They developed, tested and validated a qualitative structural model (so called concept-map) on health literacy. The main questions were: Which skills and abilities build the health literacy construct? How do health competent persons behave? An article has been published on the model (Soellner, Lehartz & Rudinger 2017). Central concepts of the model are self-control and self-regulation.

Sonia Lippke from Jacobs University Bremen, Germany started her talk by telling about the HAPA model (Schwartzer 1992) In this health behaviour change model self-efficacy is one central factor and the goals turn into  plans that turn into behavior. Non-intender becomes intender and finally actor. Health literacy can be seen as part of this model. According to Lippke the main deficiency on this model is that is focuses only on one behaviour at time. Therefore she has been involved in developing a new ”lifestyle change model” called Compensatory Carry-Over Action Model (CCAM).

Sonia Lippke

Maija-Leena Huotari from University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland told about the research project conducted at Information Studies in University of Oulu and Åbo Akademi University. She talked about the everyday health information literacy (EHIL) screening tool (Niemelä et al. 2012) and about the new research project, CogAHealth, that is funded by Academy of Finland and has started in Autumn 2016. In this project the concept of cognitive authority is central and Huotari spoke also about it´s connection to EHIL.

Anne-Kathrin Mayer and Maija-Leena Huotari

Cristiane Firnges from Robert Koch Institute, Berlin, Germany pointed out the need to develop health literacy measures for younger populations, i.e., age-specific assessment tools. She belongs to Health Literacy in Childhood and Adolescence (HLCA) Consortium: https://www.hlca-consortium.de/

Firnges and her colleagues have been developing of MOHLAA-measuring instrument. HLS-EU-Q47 (e.g., Sorensen et al. 2013) measure was used as a blueprint. Not all tems and items contents of the HLS-EU-Q47 were well understood by adolescents or they might have answered them based on hypothetical estimations/lack of experience. There was found to be a need to adapt particular items for adolescents´cognitive abilities and to their lifeworld and experiences. Limited experiences with navigating the health care system and managing diseases was obvious among the teenagers. Critical thinking is still challenge and they might be overly confident about their skills. Adolescents, especially younger ones, have strong trust to their parents.

Anne-Kathrin Mayer and Cristiane Firnges

Orkan Okan from University of Bielefeld, Germany presented the childhood perspective. Measuring health literacy of primary school-aged children (MoMChild study). He started by telling about a systematic literature review on health literacy instruments and what of them have been used for children. Okan and his colleagues has been adapting HLS-EU-Q for this age group and they are now collecting large-scale data among German children.

Orkan Okan

Anne-Kathrin Mayer Research coordinator of Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information, ZPID told about the health information literacy knowledge test (HILK) they have developed and tested. The test includes 24 items and at the latest stage it has been tested among 144 students. They have also worked on validating the test.

Veronika Kuhberg is a doctoral student at ZPID. Her presentation focused on determinants of health information literacy (HILK) in vocational school students and especially to the role of locus of control and personal beliefs. Especially external health locus of control seems to be an independent factor affecting health information literacy among this population group.

Papers will be written based on the presentations and they will be published later as a book. The day was very fruitful and I thank for Anne-Kathrin Mayer for inviting me to participate!

Heidi

New article: Taking Health Information Behaviour into Account in the design of e-health services

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The HIBA project approach and rationale for studying health information behaviour and health information literacy as a premise of developing successful e-health services is discussed in a new article just published in the Finnish Journal for eHealth and eWelfare vol 8, issue 4.

Abstract

The aim of this article is to bring forward the benefits of a better integration of a comprehensive understanding of individuals information behaviour in the design and development of e-health services. This study is a descriptive review based on a non-exhaustive selection of literature that describes the state-of-the-art, problems and opportunities identified in e-health, health information behaviour and health information literacy research. By focusing on how to tailor the information provided and the technological devices to fit the information behaviour, the approach has also potential to uncover new insights into how to adequately implement and integrate ICTs into everyday life practices of other hard-to-reach groups in society. We presuppose that it will be possible to give practical recommendations based on a combined understanding of individual differences in health information behaviour and users expectations and experiences, acquired through empirical studies focusing on older adults. Moreover, the usefulness of health information literacy as an indicator of the patterns and competences related to health information behaviour is highlighted.

Full text of the article at FinJeHeW site.

Learning about information literacy at ECIL and participating ASIST

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The European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL) took place at Prague, Czech Republic at 10.-13.10.2016. Straight after ECIL the Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIST) gathered researchers all around the world to Copenhagen, Denmark. Timing of the conferences provided me a great opportunity to join both of the conferences.

ECIL is initiated and organized by the Department of Information Management of Hacettepe University and Department of Information and Communication Sciences of Zagreb University. The main theme this year was Information Literacy in the Inclusive Society. IMG_9144_ECIL_blogiin

The keynote speeches were given by Tara Brabazon and Jan Van Dijk, and futhermore, invited speakers were Ole Pilerot, Vít Šisler and Annemaree Lloyd. Especially the keynote speeches raised discussion as Tara was intentionally very provocative in her speech and Jan´s perspective was from outside of the information and library science field.

As a member of the HIBA project I presented some of our results relating to older adults health information literacy skills. The study presented was part of the GASEL study.

WP_20161010_17_44_11_Pro_blogiin Heidi

Heidi´s PechaKucha presentation on “everyday health information literacy of older people in Finland”.

ECIL focused strongly on libraries and information literacy teaching, but there was always also a more theoretical and/or general paper or panel sessions to attend for.

IMG_9410_ECIL blogiin

Example of the interesting panel discussions in ECIL.

The abstract book of ECIL can be found here: http://ecil2016.ilconf.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/ECIL2016_BoA.pdf and selected full text papers will be later published in a ECIL’s Proceedings Books are  published by Springer (agreement with the publisher is on yearly basis) under Communications in Computer and Information Science series (CCIS).

ASIST´s theme was Creating Knowledge, Enhancing Lives through Information & Technology. Plenary speeches were given by Greg Welch from University of Central Florida and by Markus Bundschus from Roche Diagnostics.

The topics of ASIST presentations and panels covered all from health information behaviour to digital data curation and the science of games. In addition to sessions relating to information behaviour I found myself listening sessions about e.g., multiculturalism of LIS education, digital sociology and information science research, open peer review and lifelogging. Examples of the panels in ASIST: IMG_9862_ASIST blogiinIMG_9811_ASIST blogiin

ASIST included not only paper presentations and panels but also several poster presentations. Again I was there presenting the results relating HIBA and GASEL projects. This time the topic was “opinions and use of mobile information technology around older people”.

IMG_9828_ASIST blogiin Heidi

Heidi with the poster.

The ASIST proceedings and information of the previous conferences can be found here (free view for ASIST members): https://www.asist.org/publications/annual-meeting-proceedings/

Older people were present also in the street view of Copenhagen with a campaign “Do we ever stop dreaming?”

IMG_9796_ASIST_blogiin

Next ECIL will be organized in St-Malo, France and next ASIST at Washington DC. Shall we meet there?

(Post blog written by Heidi Enwald)

Focus on health information behaviour

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IMG_9067_Isto_HIBA

Heidi, Noora and Isto from HIBA participated in this year’s ISIC – The Information Behaviour Conference in Zadar, Croatia. Also Anna-Maija who worked in the project in autumn 2015 was with us in Zadar.

Heidi Enwald, foto: Mate Juric

Heidi reported findings from an earlier GASEL project in a paper titled Health information behaviour, attitudes towards health information and motivating factors for physical activity among older people: differences by sex and age together with coauthors, Noora  and her coauthors presented a poster Validating the factorial structure of the everyday health information literacy screening tool in three different populations, and we all from HIBA presented the project in a poster, imaginatively titled Taking health information behaviour into account in the development of e-health services.

IMG_8904_Ian

Prof. Ian Ruthwen

There were also several other interesting papers relating directly to the themes of HIBA. Prof. Ian Ruthwen discussed in his opening keynote information behaviour during significant life events. The talk gave much food for thought as health related events are a major category of these types of major episodes in life but also because it is not always the case. Much of the everyday health and health information practices are not experienced as significant events that apparently also affects how we react to them and what kinds of information practices stem from these mundane events and how they differ from more significant episodes of life.

Of other interesting papers, you could mention the two other papers in Heidi’s session. Ina Fourie and Valerie Nesset reported of an exploratory review of research on cancer pain and information-related needs, and Theresa Anderson and Ina Fourie discussed about information interactions related to empathetic care for the dying.