Page 26 - Health Literacy, eHealth, and Communication: Putting the Consumer First: Workshop Summary

Health Literacy, eHealth, and Communication: Putting the Consumer First: Workshop Summary

oveRvieW oF iSSUeS

potential treatments. To one with low literacy, such a page of information
can be quite intimidating.
Another site with health information was hosted by the Canadian
Health Network (www.canadianhealthnetwork.ca), a federation of dif-
ferent health resources that does not produce all of the health materials
6
itself. If one searched the Canadian Health Network for information on
the common cold, one was actually taken to another site—Capital Health,
which is located in Edmonton, Canada. While information obtained in
this redirected manner might be accurate and appropriate, an automatic
switch of sites can be confusing to consumers who expect one site and
get another.
If one goes to www.healthfinder.gov, a site sponsored by the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, and types in “cold,” one is
presented with a page listing a variety of options to click for information.
Clicking on an option then takes the user to a PDF (portable document
format) file that provides information about the cold. A PDF file, however,
requires the user to have Adobe Acrobat Reader which, if one does not
have the software, must be downloaded. A person with minimal eHealth
skills may be confused about what to do, and wonder why it is that a
piece of software must be downloaded to the computer in order to read
the page of information. Such actions can be frightening for those unfa-
miliar with health information or working with computers.
Finally, if one seeks information about the common cold from NHS
Direct (www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk), the website of the National Health Service
in the United Kingdom, one finds the design of the site to be fairly pleas-
ing to the eye. The page on the common cold is uncluttered, although
there is a fair amount of text and there are also some links for basic terms
such as sneeze, lungs, and larynx that can be used to look up additional
information. Nonetheless, despite its clear design, the site demands more
than basic literacy to understand and therefore can be a challenge for
those with low literacy skills and involves more than basic literacy.
As these examples illustrate, there are challenges to using the Inter-
net for obtaining health information. In response to such challenges, the
concept of eHealth literacy has been developed. eHealth literacy is “the
ability to seek, find, understand, and appraise health information from
electronic sources and apply the knowledge gained to addressing or solv-
ing a health problem” (Norman and Skinner, 2006b) Such a definition is
consistent with Logan’s contentions that use of the Internet is complex
and its use plus the use of other networked tools constitutes a new lan-

6 The Canadian Health Network was operating at the time of this workshop, however it
has since ceased operations. Therefore, the example provided during this presentation can
no longer be accessed.

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