Family Oncology Caregivers and Relational Health Literacy

Abstract

Nearly one-third of the U.S. population provides unpaid, informal caregiving to a loved one or friend. Caregiver health literacy involves a complex set of actions and decisions, all shaped by communication. Existing definitions depict health literacy as individuals’ skills in obtaining, understanding, communicating, and applying health information to successfully navigate the health management process. One of the major problems with existing definitions of health literacy is that it disproportionately places responsibilities of health literacy on patients and caregivers. In this conceptual piece, we define and introduce a new model of Relational Health Literacy (RHL) that emphasizes the communicative aspects of health literacy among all stakeholders (patients, caregivers, providers, systems, and communities) and how communication functions as a pathway or barrier in co-creating health care and health management processes. Future directions and recommendations for model development are described.

Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor Therapy: Key Principles When Educating Patients

“…For example, education through audio or video recordings may benefit patients with literacy issues (Valenti, 2014). Before planning educational activities, oncology nurses can conduct a learning needs assessment with individual patients to determine factors such as health literacy level, reading skills, personal preferences for learning, cultural or religious aspects, pain level, and amount of anxiety (Canadian Partnership Against Cancer, 2018;Goldsmith & Terui, 2018;Marcus, 2014). Although no single needs assessment is recommended, examples of wider needs assessment tools incorporating educational elements were developed and reviewed (Australian Cancer Survivorship Centre, 2016).…”

A systematic scoping review of the literacy literature to develop a digital food and nutrition literacy model for low‐income adults to make healthy choices in the online food retail ecosystem to reduce obesity risk

“…Figure 1 depicts the PRISMA flow diagram for the search that collected data to inform RQ1. We identified 40 evidence sources that described and visually depicted a conceptual model or framework for health literacy 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 ( n = 25); food and nutrition literacy 24 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 ( n = 10); and digital, advertising, or marketing and media literacy ( n = 5). 26 , 73 , 74 , 75 , 76 , 77 Although several of the 40 models and frameworks described concepts related to financial and resource management, we did not find an explicit model for financial literacy.…”

Receiving and breaking bad news: A qualitative study of family carers managing a cancer diagnosis and interactions with healthcare services

“…This could be integrated within the holistic needs assessment (Macmillan, 2021b) that cancer patients complete routinely; they could be asked the question whether they have a friend or family member supporting them and how they are coping. Given the increasing reliance on informal carers, as outpatient treatment becomes more common due to constraints on healthcare systems (Goldsmith & Terui, 2018), this aspect may be especially important in older patients or those with no partners. As the number of older patients with cancer increases, the number of ageing carers is also increasing.…”

“…Health literacy involves not only carer and patient cognitive and functional skills but also the collaborative efforts among patients, carers, healthcare professionals and communities – a process defined as relational health literacy (Batterham et al, 2016; Goldsmith & Terui, 2018). Communication in healthcare settings may serve as a barrier or pathway to improved and relational health literacy; therefore, the training of oncology health professionals in the communication of bad news is important.…”