Coronavirus-Related Health Literacy: A Cross-Sectional Study during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an overabundance of valid and invalid information to spread rapidly via traditional media as well as by internet and digital communication. Health literacy (HL) is the ability to access, understand, appraise, and apply health information, making it fundamental for finding, interpreting, and correctly using COVID-19 information. A cross-sectional study of a sample of 3500 participants representative of the Italian adult population aged 18+ years was conducted in Italy in 2021. A validated HL questionnaire was employed, including sections on coronavirus-related HL, general HL, sociodemographic characteristics, risk factors, and respondents’ lifestyle. Of our sample, 49.3% had “excellent” levels of coronavirus-related HL and 50.7% had “sufficient” (20.7%) or “limited” (30.0%) levels. Although the overall HL-COVID level was high, many participants reported difficulties dealing with COVID-19 information; in particular, participants older than 65 years, with a low education level, living in southern regions of Italy, and with high financial deprivation. Targeted public information campaigns and the promotion of HL are required for better navigation of health information environments. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to improve HL and to prepare the general population for future emergency and non-emergency situations, confirming that HL can be considered a social vaccine.

COVID-19 vaccine literacy: A scoping review

“…This instrument was used to assess levels of VL in the general Portuguese population 61 together with other questions about digital and navigational HL, and to identify the determinants of VL of the Italian population through two online and telephone surveys, performed before 15 and during the COVID-19 pandemic. 78 …”

“…As mentioned, in some studies an updated version of the European Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLS19-Q47) was used, developed in the framework of the M-POHL collaboration (WHO Action Network on Measuring Population and Organizational Health Literacy), 100 also including four vaccination-related questions to assess the vaccination-specific HL. 15 , 78 In other surveys, participants’ HL was measured using the 12-item short version of HLS-EU-Q, integrated with three vaccine-related items extracted from the full version of HLS-EU-Q, to assess vaccine literacy among people with different levels of perceived stress related to the pandemic. As expected, people with higher HL showed lower vaccine hesitancy.…”

Assessing Internet Surfing Behaviours and Digital Health Literacy among University Students in Ghana during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Therefore, it is vital to understand online health information-seeking behaviours and DHL among university students in Ghana during the COVID-19 pandemic. To date, research about university students' internet surfing behaviours and COVID-19 DHL in Ghana is lacking compared to Europe [7,10,11,15,24], the USA [9], and Asia [4,12,16,18]. Besides, due to cultural, contextual, and/or geographical disparities as well as population characteristics, the findings may not be applicable in the Ghanaian context.…”

“…Some researchers reported that adolescents and young adults in schools experienced challenges in surfing the internet for COVID-19-related information [4,7,10,11,15,24]. However, these students may have had limited searching skills or problems with literacy and other issues that may have made it difficult for them to locate and understand authoritative information.…”

“…A plethora of investigations on COVID-19 DHL have revealed that university students have a low to high level of DHL. Particularly, investigators in Germany [7,23], Italy [24], Portugal [10], and East and South-East Asia [China, Malaysia, Philippines] [12] found that their university students had a high level of DHL for online health information seeking. Comparable conclusions were drawn in Slovenia [11], Denmark [15], Vietnam [18], Pakistan [4], Malaysia [19], and Saudi Arabia [13].…”