E-health literacy and associated factors among chronic patients in a low-income country: a cross-sectional survey

Abstract

Background: Chronic patients persistently seek for health information on the internet for medication information seeking, nutrition, disease management, information regarding disease preventive actions and so on. Consumers ability to search, find, appraise and use health information from the internet is known as eHealth literacy skill. eHealth literacy is a congregate set of six basic skills (traditional literacy, health literacy, information literacy, scientific literacy, media literacy and computer literacy). The aim of this study was to assess eHealth literacy level and associated factors among internet user chronic patients in Northwest Ethiopia. Methods: Institutional based cross-sectional study design was conducted. Stratified sampling technique was used to select 423 study participants among chronic patients. The eHealth literacy scale (eHEALS) was used for data collection. The eHEALS is a validated eight-item Likert scaled questionnaire used to asses self-reported capability of eHealth consumers to find, appraise, and use health related information from the internet to solve health problems. Statistical Package for Social science version 20 was used for data entry and further analysis. Multivariable logistic regression was used to examine the association between the eHealth literacy skill and associated factors. Significance was obtained at 95% CI and p < 0.05. Result: In total, 423 study subjects were approached and included in the study from February to May, 2019. The response rate to the survey was 95.3%. The majority of respondents 268 (66.3%) were males and mean age was 35.58 ± 14.8 years. The multivariable logistic regression model indicated that participants with higher education (at least having the diploma) are more likely to possess high eHealth literacy skill with Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR): 3.48,

Group differences in health literacy are ameliorated in ehealth literacy

“…Utilizing the Norman and Skinner (2006) scale for measuring self-perceived eHealth literacy (eHEALS) in a representative Israeli sample, Neter and Brainin (2012) found age and education differences between people with high and low eHealth literacy levels, so that the more literate were younger and more educated. Similar findings regarding demographic variables were found in other samples (Choi & Dinitto, 2013;Hoogland et al, 2020;Knapp et al, 2011;Shiferaw, Tilahun, Endehabtu, Gullslett, & Mengiste, 2020). Moreover, differences between high and low eHealth literates were found in information consumption practices and search outcomes, where search outcomes included contact with the attending physician, enhanced use of medical insurance, health behaviors, self-management of health needs, and understanding of the disease/condition (Neter & Brainin, 2012).…”

“…Tangible outcomes could be adoption of health behaviors (Guo et al, 2021;Kim et al, 2018;e.g. Mitsutake, Shibata, Ishii, & Oka, 2016), healthcare utilization (Maroney et al, 2020) and ultimately health (or perceived health, see Shiferaw et al, 2020) though a recent review concluded that there are currently too few studies attesting on these associations (Neter & Brainin, 2019). eHealth literacy has been measured thus far mostly with eHEALS (Griebel et al, 2017;Neter & Brainin, 2019), though its shortfalls chiefly in assessing 'participative Internet' (i.e.…”

The associations among individual factors, eHealth literacy, depression symptoms and health related quality of life among Chinese elderly: a cross-section study

“…Smoking and excessive alcohol were not associated with eHEALS scores. The results were consistent with general surveys of Japanese adults, in which the eHEALS scores was not associated with smoking or alcohol consumption but were associated with physical activity [35,37]. This may be because the rates of habitual drinkers (470/6183, 7.6%) and current smokers (589/6183, 9.5%) were low in this study; thus, it is di cult to assess the association of eHEALS scores and drinking and smoking.…”

Views of Mexican outpatients with rheumatoid arthritis on sexual and reproductive health: A cross-sectional study

“…SRH knowledge might be considered part of health literacy [ 81 ]. The relevance of achieving (health) literacy relies on literacy to impact health knowledge, health status, and access to health services, in addition to income level, occupation, education, housing, and access to medical care [ 81 , 82 ]; all of them are “red spots” in the Latin-American region and contribute to the current humanitarian crisis. Meanwhile, health literacy has been shown to positively impact different health-related outcomes [ 83 , 84 ], and should be integrated in to national education initiatives.…”