Digital Health Literacy on COVID-19 for All: Co-creation and Evaluation of Interventions for Ethnic Minorities and Chinese People With Chronic Illnesses in Hong Kong

Digital Health Literacy on COVID-19 for All: Co-creation and Evaluation of Interventions for Ethnic Minorities and Chinese People With Chronic Illnesses in Hong Kong

Digital Health Literacy on COVID-19 for All: Co-creation and Evaluation of Interventions for Ethnic Minorities and Chinese People With Chronic Illnesses in Hong Kong

During the pandemic, people are anxious for information, and electronic platform serves the purpose of having first-hand health information and spreading it to massive population within a short time. However, the source and credibility of the influx of online information are hard to be verified. Digital health literacy (DHL) is the capacity to access, understand, evaluate, and apply health information from electronic sources, which is an important attribute that everyone should possess. Recent studies from our group in Hong Kong have shown that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, DHL is an issue facing people of all ages, especially ethnic minorities (EMs), people with chronic illnesses (PWCI), and professional and lay caregivers (CGs). Considering that, the present research project aims to co-create DHL interventions with these three groups of people to meet their specific needs in DHL, in addition, to assess the efficacy of the DHL interventions on eHealth literacy, vaccine literacy, and actions taken for COVID-19 prevention. The present research is a 4-year project, involving three phases. Phase 1 involves focus group interviews and cognitive interviews with the three groups of people for developing interventions and evaluating the proposed interventions. Phase 2 involves individual interviews with the three groups of people for testing the feasibility and acceptability of the interventions. Phase 3 involves a 6-month longitudinal quantitative research, testing for the efficacy of the interventions in three dimensions: literacy, attitude, and behavior. Participants from the three groups will be invited to join virtual or face-to-face training, watch short videos on social media, participate in virtual bi-weekly group discussion, and fill in questionnaires for five times during the course of the study. This co-creation of new knowledge by stakeholders and researchers is expected to increase the uptake of the research outcomes and adoption of the DHL interventions.

This is a single-blinded, randomized controlled trial that outcome assessors will be prevented from having knowledge of the interventions assigned to individual participant

The interventions will be developed based on the Best Practices for Digital Health Literacy, WHO health literacy toolkits and the findings of the interviews. The content to be covered in the intervention will include news about vaccines; alerts about COVID-19 preventive measures; guidelines on social distancing, COVID-19 screening test arrangements, vaccination and compulsory quarantines; COVID-19-related law enforcement; and self-monitoring of COVID-19 symptoms

Participants from the intervention group will be invited to join virtual or face-to-face training, watch short videos on social media, participate in virtual bi-weekly group discussion, and fill in questionnaires for five times during the course of the study

Measured by the eHealth Literacy scale (eHEAL), an 8-item self-reported efficacy scale scored on a 5-point Likert scale

Inclusion Criteria: ethnic minorities (EMs), people with chronic illnesses (PWCI), and caregivers (CGs) able to use a computer, smartphone, or laptop to access the Internet at home Exclusion Criteria: diagnosis of an acute psychotic disease or life-limiting condition; having a visual, auditory, or fine motor disorder.