Dr. Liang Wang Creates Measure for Health Literacy Database
A health literacy measure created by Dr. Liang Wang, Associate Professor for the East Tennessee State University College of Public Health’s Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, has been selected for an online health literacy database. The instrument measure individuals' health literacy related to infectious disease.
The database, the Health Literacy Tool Shed, is a collaboration among CommunicateHealth, Inc., Boston University, and RTI International with funding provided by the National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine.
Recent definitions of health literacy focus on specific skills needed to navigate the health care system and on the importance of clear communication between health care providers and their patients. Health care providers and patients both play important roles in health literacy, but most measures focus on an individual’s health literacy level. The site contains information about measures, including their psychometric properties, based on a review of the peer-reviewed literature.
"The Infectious Disease Specific Health Literacy scale (IDSHL) has important public health utility,” stated Dr. Wang. “In particular, the scale is relatively easy to use and administer and can be completed in 20–30 minutes.”
Dr. Wang and his team created and tested the measure “Infectious Disease-Specific Health Literacy Scale – IDSHL” in 2016. To create the measure, Dr. Wang’s team focused on three core principles to guide conceptualization of the IDSHL instrument: cognition, decision-making and self-efficacy to prevent or treat infectious diseases. They used these core principles to facilitate four focus groups among individuals living in Beijing (average education level: middle school) in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the domains which should be included in the instrument.
A conceptual model consisting of six domains was formed: five inter-related domains assessed one's skills to prevent/treat infectious diseases and the remaining domain assessed cognitive ability.
“This instrument can be used by healthcare professionals to screen patients who may be at risk for misinterpreting key health information,” continued Dr. Wang. “It can also be used as a population-level IDSHL assessment tool in public health promotion and prevention activities and research."