Transforming lives: Combating digital health inequality

IFLA Journal ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 187-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bob Gann
Keyword(s):  
Health Inequality ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Digital Health ◽  
Patient Empowerment ◽  
Digital Inclusion ◽  
New Public Health ◽  
New Public ◽  
Health And Illness ◽  
Public Health Challenge ◽  
Digital Exclusion

For those who are connected digitally, the digital health revolution is an enormous opportunity for patient empowerment. However, half the world’s population are not online. Those who are least likely to be online are exactly those who experience the greatest burden of ill health. As information about health and illness is increasingly (and often exclusively) available in digital form, we face a new public health challenge – digital health inequality. Libraries are ideally placed to reach these population groups who may be hardest to reach. The IFLA (2017) Statement on Digital Literacy recognises that with libraries’ mission to help all their users access and apply the information they need for personal and community development, digital inclusion is an important part of the practice of librarianship. Successful interventions to improve digital inclusion involve targeting connecting, and transforming lives. This article focuses on initiatives to combat digital exclusion in England and Wales.

scholarly journals Overnight smartphone use: A new public health challenge? A novel study design based on high-resolution smartphone data

PLoS ONE ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. e0204811 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naja Hulvej Rod ◽  
Agnete Skovlund Dissing ◽  
Alice Clark ◽  
Thomas Alexander Gerds ◽  
Rikke Lund
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Study Design ◽  
Health Challenge ◽  
New Public Health ◽  
New Public ◽  
Public Health Challenge ◽  
Smartphone Use

From health education to digital health literacy – building on the past to shape the future

2021 ◽  
pp. 175797592110440
Author(s):  
Don Nutbeam
Keyword(s):  
Health Literacy ◽  
Health Education ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Digital Health ◽  
Literacy Skills ◽  
Transferable Skills ◽  
New Public Health ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
New Public ◽  
Available Information

Health education has continuously evolved and taken several distinctive forms over the decades. The emergence of new concepts such as health promotion and health literacy have helped to shape and refine our understanding of how the purpose, content and methods of health education can adapt with to new public health methods and priorities. Viewing health education through the lens of health literacy has been particularly helpful in differentiating between traditional task-focused health education, and skills-focused health education designed to develop more generic, transferable skills. The advent of digital media has enabled unprecedented access to health information but brought with it new challenges. Managing the volume of available information, and assessing its quality and reliability have become essential digital health literacy skills in the information age. As health educators we need to continue to adapt our practices to these new opportunities and understand the challenges that come with them.

scholarly journals How Do We Explain the Social, Political, and Economic Determinants of Health? A Call for the Inclusion of Social Theories of Health Inequality Within U.S.-Based Public Health Pedagogy

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 246-252
Author(s):  
Michael Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Inequality ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Economic Determinants ◽  
New Public Health ◽  
Theoretical Status ◽  
New Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Theories ◽  
Health And Disease

New public health educational competencies include the ability to explain social phenomena—such as politics, globalization, and racism—and their relationship to health and disease. Formal explanations of social phenomena call for social theory. However, public health pedagogy is principally concerned with behavioral theory. This piece surveys the behavioral theoretical status quo within public health pedagogy and discusses its implication. The concept of “social theories of health inequality”—that is, explanations of health-relevant social phenomena and their role in producing differences in health, morbidity, and mortality—is proposed as one way of fulfilling new educational competencies. Emerging social theories of health inequality are identified and discussed in relation to public health pedagogy.

scholarly journals Challenges and LIS Responses to Digital Literacy in Crisis

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-33
Author(s):  
Michelle Falk
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Digital Citizenship ◽  
Digital Inclusion ◽  
Community Values ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Innovative Solutions ◽  
Economic Barriers ◽  
Digital Exclusion

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic beginning in the Spring of 2020, vulnerable Canadians were left behind by digital exclusion, which was exacerbated by an increased reliance on digital technologies. In this article, I seek to provide an overview of the links between digital inclusion, social justice, and the values of the LIS profession. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, another crisis of digital exclusion has revealed the ways in which digital citizenship and socio-economic exclusion are fundamentally intertwined. In response, many LIS professionals have overcome extensive closures and reductions in resources to find innovative solutions to this crisis of inequality. This article will provide just a few examples of these responses from LIS organizations. Indeed, even among overwhelming barriers, LIS professionals have not lost sight of community values and commitment to social justice in challenging times. In unprecedented times, LIS professionals have found innovation to address ongoing social and economic barriers of digital exclusion.

scholarly journals Zika virus infection, a new public health challenge

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gubio C. Campos ◽  
Silvia I. Sardi ◽  
Manoel Sarno ◽  
Carlos Brites
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Virus Infection ◽  
Zika Virus ◽  
Health Challenge ◽  
New Public Health ◽  
Zika Virus Infection ◽  
New Public ◽  
Public Health Challenge

scholarly journals Imported Schistosomiasis: A New Public Health Challenge for China

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Wang ◽  
Xiaoying Wu ◽  
Xiaoli Li ◽  
Xiaoyan Zheng ◽  
Fei Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Challenge ◽  
New Public Health ◽  
New Public ◽  
Public Health Challenge

scholarly journals The Rise of the Empowered Physician in the Digital Health Era: Viewpoint (Preprint)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bertalan Mesko ◽  
Zsuzsa Győrffy
Keyword(s):  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Digital Health ◽  
Healing Process ◽  
Patient Empowerment ◽  
Medical Professional ◽  
Physician Patient Relationship ◽  
Technological Transformation ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Health Technologies ◽  
The Cost

UNSTRUCTURED Being a 21st-century health care provider is extremely demanding. The growing number of chronic diseases, lack of medical workforce, increasing amounts of administrative tasks, the cost of medical treatment, and rising life expectancy result in an immense challenge for medical professionals. This transformation has been triggered by the growing presence of digital health. Digital health does not only refer to technological transformation; it also fundamentally reshapes the physician-patient relationship and treatment circumstances. We argue that patient empowerment, the spread of digital health, the biopsychosocial-digital approach, and the disappearance of the ivory tower of medicine lead to a new role for physicians. Digital health allows the job of being a medical professional to become more rewarding and creative. The characteristics of a physician-as-idol could shift from self-confident to curious, from rule follower to creative, and from lone hero to team worker. Empowered physicians (e-physicians) can be described as “electronic,” where they use digital technologies in their practice with ease; “enabled,” where they are enabled by regulations and guidelines; and “empowered,” where they are empowered by technologies that support their job and their empowered patients (e-patients). They can be described as “experts” in the use of technologies in their practice or in knowing the best, most reliable, and trustworthy digital health sources and technologies. They can also be described as “engaged,” when understanding the feelings and points of view of their patients, giving relevant feedback, and involving them throughout the whole healing process. The skills and approaches that characterize this era of e-physicians, such as face-to-face communication skills, digital literacy, interdisciplinarity, knowing where to find information, translating large amounts of data into insights for patients, among others, should always have been at the core of practicing medicine. However, the economical, technological, and administrative burden of the profession has not made it possible for most physicians to enjoy the benefits of their training, individual capabilities, and creativity. By understanding how digital health technologies can support or augment their capabilities, physicians would have the chance to practice the art of medicine like never before.

scholarly journals Estimating Patient Empowerment and Nurses’ Use of Digital Strategies: eSurvey Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (18) ◽  
pp. 9844
Author(s):  
Olga Navarro Martínez ◽  
Jorge Igual García ◽  
Vicente Traver Salcedo
Keyword(s):  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Digital Health ◽  
Quality Care ◽  
Patient Empowerment ◽  
Health Centers ◽  
Digital Resources ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Digital World ◽  
Use Of Technology ◽  
The One

Patient empowerment is seen as the capability to understand health information and make decisions based on it. It is a competence that can improve self-care, adherence and overall health. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the need for information and has also reduced the number of visits to health centers. Nurses have had to adapt in order to continue offering quality care in different environments such as the digital world, but this entails assessing the level of their patients’ empowerment and adapting material and educational messages to new realities. The aim of this study is, on the one hand, to assess nurses’ use of digital resources to provide reinforcing information to their patients and, on the other hand, to evaluate how they assess the level of empowerment of their patients. To perform the study, 850 nurses answered 21 questions related to their own digital literacy and patients’ empowerment. The ability to make decisions is the characteristic most selected by nurses (70%) as useful in measuring patient empowerment, whereas 9.19% do not measure it in any way. Printed material is most often used by nurses to offer additional information to patients (71.93%), mobile applications are the least used option (21.58%), and elder nurses are those who most recommend digital resources. In this study, younger nurses make little or no use of technology as a resource for training and monitoring patients. In spite of some limitations concerning the study, digital health needs to be promoted as an indisputable tool in the nurse’s briefcase in the future to ensure that older patients can manage electronic resources in different fields.

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