Health literacy

What is "health literacy"? -- Why is health literacy important? -- The latest in health literacy -- Ten tips for health marketing and communication practitioners"Brought to you by the Marketing and Communication Strategy Branch in the Division of Health Communication and Marketing, National Center for Health Marketing, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).""July 2009."Mode of access: Internet as an Acrobat .pdf file (2.54 MB, 5 p.).System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.Includes bibliographical references (p.4 -5.

Cross-Cultural Health Communication

Setiap kebudayaan memiliki pandangan yang beragam tentang kesehatan atau penyakit, kehidupan atau kematian. Ada masyarakat yang menganggap penyakit sebagai nasib yang harus diterima secara fatalistik. Ada pula masyarakat yang memandangnya sebagai cobaan dari Tuhan, dsb. Selain itu, terdapat juga perbedaan konsep untuk menamai jenis penyakit tertentu pada sejumlah pengguna bahasa yang berbeda. Nama suatu penyakit dalam suatu bahasa tidak bisa diterjemahkan langsung ke dalam bahasa lain. Dokter berkebangsaan Amerika, misalnya, akan kebingungan bila menangani pasien orang Indonesia yang berpenyakti “raja singa”, karena nama penyakit itu tak bisa diterjemahkan langsung menjadi “king lion”. Keragaman budaya ini berimplikasi pada para petugas kesehatan, perawat, dokter, untuk memahami budaya pasien, yang ditanganinya, yang berasal dari komunitas budaya berbeda. Kekeliruan memahami latar belakang budaya pasien dapat menimbulkan kesalahan dalam mendiagnosis penyakit, menangani pasien, atau menentukan resep obat

Progress and opportunities in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender health communications

This article describes elements of effective health communication and highlights strategies that may best be adopted or adapted in relation to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) populations. Studies have documented the utility of multidimensional approaches to health communication from the macro level of interventions targeting entire populations to the micro level of communication between health care provider and consumer. Although evidence of health disparities in LGBT communities underscores the importance of population-specific interventions, health promotion campaigns rarely target these populations and health communication activities seldom account for the diversity of LGBT communities. Advances in health communication suggest promising direction for LGBT-specific risk prevention and health promotion strategies on community, group, and provider/consumer levels. Opportunities for future health communication efforts include involving LGBT communities in the development of appropriate health communication campaigns and materials, enhancing media literacy among LGBT individuals, supporting LGBT-focused research and evaluation of health communication activities, and ensuring that health care providers possess the knowledge, skills, and competency to communicate effectively with LGBT consumers

Electronically Assisting Communication for Health Professionals

New information and computing technologies offer cost efficient and effective learning opportunities for health care professionals. The Assisted Electronic Communication project is prototyping, administering and evaluating a digital discourse system for health care professionals within an acute Hospital. Health care staff participating in the study are able to access and contribute to threaded, asynchronous discussions and themed information in the context of critical work documents. Early indications are that the system is viewed very positively, and seen as a way of critically engaging with new material that is getting closer to an idealized learning in the workplace

Barriers to obesity communication - Power, habitus and hidden assumptions

Communication on health issues often founders on the avoidance or denial of key messages by intended recipients. This paper explores the development and application of a research methodology combining elements of Pierre Bourdieu’s work on the unconscious nature of practice with Gerhard Maletzke’s psychological model of communication. This combination was designed to elicit deeper responses than those often found in health communication research. This alternative methodological approach was used to evaluate a year-long, city-wide anti-obesity campaign in Sheffield, UK, which targeted key gatekeepers in the message chain; their responses generate useful insights into resistance to uncomfortable communication. The paper concludes with suggestions for addressing communication about obesity and potentially other uncomfortable health and social topics

Effects of Implementing a Health Team Communication Redesign on Hospital Readmissions Within 30 Days

Background and Rationale Poor communication between health team members can interfere with timely, coordinated preparation for hospital discharge. Research on daily bedside interprofessional health team rounds and nursing bedside shift handoff reports provides evidence that these strategies can improve communication. Aims To improve health team communication and collaboration about hospital discharge; improve patient experience of discharge measured by patient‐reported quality of discharge teaching, readiness for discharge, and postdischarge coping difficulty; and reduce readmissions and emergency department (ED) visits postdischarge. Methods A two‐sample pre‐ and postintervention design provided baseline data for redesign of health team communication processes and comparison data for evaluation of the new process’ impact. Health team members (n = 105 [pre], n = 95 [post]) from two surgical units of an academic medical center in the midwestern United States provided data on discharge‐related communication and collaboration. Patients (n = 413 [pre], n = 191 [post]) provided data on their discharge experience (quality of discharge teaching, readiness for discharge, postdischarge coping difficulty) and outcomes (readmissions, ED visits). Chi‐square and t tests were used for unadjusted pre‐ and postintervention comparisons. Logistic regression of readmissions with a matched pre‐ and postintervention sample included adjustments for patient characteristics and hospitalization factors. Results Readmissions decreased from 18% to 12% (p \u3c .001); ED visits decreased from 4.4% to 1.5% (p \u3c .001). Changes in health team communication and collaboration and patients’ experience of discharge were minimal. Discussion The targeted outcomes of readmission and ED visits improved after the health team communication process redesign. The process indicators did not improve; potential explanations include unmeasured hospital and unit discharge, and other care process changes during the study timeframe. Linking Evidence to Practice Evidence from daily interprofessional team bedside rounding and bedside shift report studies was translated into a redesign of health team communication for discharge. These strategies support readmission reduction efforts

Communication in animal health and welfare planning

The project ‘Minimising medicine use in organic dairy herds through animal health and welfare promotion’ is focused on animal welfare assessment and its role in the active use of animal health plans in order to improve animal health and welfare on organic farms. To be active, a health plan requires dialogue between the farmer and those who are able to view the farm from the outside e.g. vets and advisors. The importance of this communication is the focus of this paper. Across Europe we see highly diverse farming systems and similarly diversity in advisory systems and their approaches to communicating with farmers. One of the objectives of the AniPlan project is to develop approaches to health planning that are robust yet sufficiently adaptable to be applied across these various conditions. This will involve utilising knowledge of current approaches to communication between farmer and advisor, but also the opportunity for new ways of communication that contribute to the process of animal health and welfare promotion. Relevance to the farmer is paramount. In this paper, three current approaches are summarised, focusing on the dialogue between farmer and ‘external persons’. These are the Danish Stable Schools, the Dutch farmer study groups (where farmers participate in doing animal welfare assessment in a fellow-farmer’s herd) and the Swiss pro-Q project, where there is a very active dialogue between advisors and farmers in a continuous feed-back system. Further to these descriptions, the paper summarises the results of discussions between participants at the first AniPlan workshop in Hellevad, Denmark on the subject of communication in the animal health planning process

Critical factors affecting consumer acceptance of online health communication: an application of service quality models

The paper examines critical factors affecting consumer behavioral intentions in accepting online health communication through social networking sites. Unlike recent research under this topic, the paper assimilates some components of service quality dimensions and consumer behavior theories. The paper employs factor analysis and structural equation modelling analysis with latent variables to identify critical factors from the survey data collected from Korean consumers. The results of the study identifies three major constructs: consumer needs for health information, the perceived value of tangible attributes of health information providers, and the perceived value of intangible attributes of health information providers. The results show that consumer needs for health information and the tangible and intangible attributes of health information providers should be considered as important antecedents of accepting online health communication through social networking sites. The findings suggest that the success of online health communication via social networking sites largely depends on the tangible and intangible attributes of health information providers

Who Is Caring for the Caregiver? The Role of Cybercoping for Dementia Caregivers

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between dementia caregivers’ communication behaviors (information seeking and forwarding) and their outcomes (coping outcomes: e.g., dealing better with negative feelings or improved medical outcomes). A survey data set of dementia patients’ caregivers substantiates the effects of communication behaviors about dementia illness on coping outcomes, as well as the mediating role of emotion-focused and problem-focused coping processes. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), this study found positive effects of communication behaviors on outcomes through coping processes. Further, the results indicate that communication behaviors in cyberspace are crucial for caregivers to cope with dementia, both affectively (improvement of caregivers’ emotional control) and physically (health improvement of patients). The implications for the improvement of public health through online health communication behaviors are discussed