Codesign and implementation of an equity-promoting national health literacy programme for people living with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD): a protocol for the application of the Optimising Health Literacy and Access (Ophelia) process

Linguistic adaptation and psychometric properties of the health literacy questionnaire in serbian language among people with chronic diseases

OBJECTIVE

To translate the Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ) to Serbian language and examine its psychometric characteristics.

METHODS

This cross-sectional study was conducted among 295 people with chronic diseases from the Foča region (Republic of Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina). The HLQ was translated according to the translation integrity procedure. Construct validity was tested using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using the maximum likelihood estimator and reliability was estimated using the α and ω coefficients.

RESULTS

Minor linguistic differences in 17 items were observed between the original and the initial forward translation and were corrected. The parameters of one-factor CFA on domains 3 and 8 fitted well. The parameters of the CFA for domains 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 9 were acceptable after modification using residuals' correlation. The α and ω coefficients for all domains were good to excellent (>0.80).

CONCLUSION

Each domain of the HLQ in Serbian has acceptable construct validity and overall good reliability. This study adds to the growing evidence that the HLQ is a useful tool to provide in-depth multidimensional information on health literacy to improve researchers and policymakers understanding of the health literacy strengths, needs and preferences across cultures and languages.

Application of the optimizing health literacy and access (Ophelia) process in partnership with a refugee community in Australia: Study protocol

Refugees experience health inequities resulting from multiple barriers and difficulties in accessing and engaging with services. A health literacy development approach can be used to understand health literacy strengths, needs, and preferences to build equitable access to services and information. This protocol details an adaptation of the Ophelia (Optimizing Health Literacy and Access) process to ensure authentic engagement of all stakeholders to generate culturally appropriate, needed, wanted and implementable multisectoral solutions among a former refugee community in Melbourne, Australia. The Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ), widely applied around the world in different population groups, including refugees, is usually the quantitative needs assessment tool of the Ophelia process. This protocol outlines an approach tailored to the context, literacy, and health literacy needs of former refugees. This project will engage a refugee settlement agency and a former refugee community (Karen people origin from Myanmar also formerly knowns as Burma) in codesign from inception. A needs assessment will identify health literacy strengths, needs, and preferences, basic demographic data and service engagement of the Karen community. This community will be engaged and interviewed using a semi-structured interview based on the Conversational Health Literacy and Assessment Tool (CHAT) will cover supportive professional and personal relationships, health behaviors, access to health information, use of health services, and health promotion barriers and support. Using the needs assessment data, vignettes portraying typical individuals from this community will be developed. Stakeholders will be invited to participate in ideas generation and prioritization workshops for in-depth discussion on what works well and not well for the community. Contextually and culturally appropriate and meaningful action ideas will be co-designed to respond to identified health literacy strengths, needs, and preferences of the community. This protocol will develop and test new and improved methods that are likely to be useful for community-based organizations and health services to systematically understand and improve communication, services and outcomes among disadvantaged groups, particularly migrants and refugees.

Using Co-Design to Develop a Health Literacy Intervention with Socially Disadvantaged Adolescents

The aim of this study was to initiate a co-design process with adolescents to inform the development of a targeted health literacy intervention for implementation in designated socioeconomically disadvantaged post-primary schools in Ireland. Purposely developed vignettes were explored in a series of eight workshops that were conducted separately with staff (n = 26) and students (n = 33) across four schools. Data was analysed using content analysis. A number of key health topics were identified as important and influential for the participants in this context: food choices, mental health and wellbeing, physical activity and sedentary behaviour, sleep and substance misuse. Participants also suggested many health-related capacity building actions. Participants recognized that many of these health topics and capacity building actions were intertwined and also highlighted that some of these actions may be more feasible and/or impactful than others. For example, students and school staff both indicated the need to use relevant, applied and engaging approaches to improve health literacy and subsequent health behaviour. The co-design process adopted empowered stakeholders to actively engage in the design and development of future intervention strategies, which may increase the likelihood of acceptability, effectiveness and sustainability of the resulting intervention.