DIGITAL HEALTH LITERACY
In today’s digital age, it is vital to have digital health literacy to effectively use digital technologies in managing your health.
An individual’s ability to use digital technologies to access, understand and manage their health information is referred to as digital health literacy.
In today’s digital age, it is vital to have digital health literacy to effectively use digital technologies in managing your health. This can include using digital tools to track and manage your health data, communicating with your healthcare providers using digital platforms, and using digital tools to find information on health topics.
To some degree, many people already use technology in tracking and keeping up to date with their health. Some of the digital health literacy benefits are as follows:
1
Most digital health tools are free or minimal cost to use. This means that they are accessible to a wider range of people than traditional health care technologies.
2
Most digital health tools are portable and can be used from any location with an internet connection. This means that they can be used by people who are not able to visit a doctor or health care facility.
3
Also, many digital health tools are self-reported and allow individuals to track their own health data in their own time and format. This can help people to learn more about their own health and to make more informed decisions about their health care.
By learning about the different types of digital health tools, how they can be used safely and effectively; and how to communicate with their health care providers digitally, we can all improve on our digital health literacy.
In 2022, W2 Academy took part in a digital health literacy pilot project with Bassetlaw Community Voluntary Service (BCVS) focusing on ethnic minority communities. The empirical data from the pilot demonstrated that while most ethnic minority community members have access to tools to improve their digital health literacy, there is a small percentage that lacks access to tools. Most of the barriers are centred around distrust between the UK healthcare system and ethnic minority communities.
The distrust is sometimes linked to cultural difference, language barriers, historical discrimination, and a lack of representation of minorities within the healthcare decision making.
In some instances, ethnic minority groups may have different beliefs around the causes of illness and what the best treatment maybe. as a result of cultural differences, this can cause disagreements with healthcare providers and reluctance to follow recommended treatment plans.
Language barriers was also identified as a cause of mistrust. If patient struggles to communicate their symptoms, it can result in healthcare providers inability to understand patients’ needs. Cultural background can lead to misdiagnoses. While others may also believe there is a historic mistreatment of ethnic minorities in healthcare, citing studies like: the Tuskegee syphilis in America, for others, it is just lack of empathy that deters them from engaging with the healthcare system, digitally or otherwise.
The Tuskegee syphilis study which discusses how African American men were left untreated with syphilis for decades, has had a lasting impact on trust in medical research among African Americans and even among ethnic minority communities within the UK. Even incidents like the Windrush scandal, in which some black British citizens were wrongly detained and deported, has added to existing fears around seeking healthcare and sharing personal information with the government.
A lack of representation of ethnic minority communities within the healthcare workforce and decision making can lead to a lack of understanding and the perpetuation of certain stereotypes. This can lead to lack of empathy towards minority patients and making minority patients feeling their concerns are not taken seriously.
As a charity, we believe some of these complex mistrust issue requires significant efforts to tackle hence a follow up local focus group meeting was carried out to better understand the needs of the community regarding healthcare. Following that meeting, we have opened our doors for ethnic minority communities in the Bassetlaw area to come and use our workstations and sign up to our digital health literacy workshops.
We are also working with BCVS to deliver different healthcare centred activities for different communities, for instance our monthly “Walk and Talk” group and our upcoming dance aerobic and workout group
