Health literacy and the World Wide Web: Comparing the readability of leading incident cancers on the Internet

Abstract

findings suggest the need for readable cancer information on the Web. Health promoters, health informaticians, medical journalists, and web page editors must collaborate to ensure the use of plain language to match the literacy skills of consumers.

Information about oral cancer on the Internet: our patients cannot understand it

“…2,3 Online information on cancer can not only increase a patient's knowledge, favour realistic expectations, and improve outcome, 3 but can also ease communication between patients and physicians. Comprehension is essential if information on health is to be useful, and although it has been reported that the readability of websites on cancer must be improved, 4 we could find no investigations that did so. This study was designed to assess the readability of online information on oral cancer.…”

Disparities in How Parents Are Learning about the Human Papillomavirus Vaccine

“…The internet is increasingly the medium of choice for those seeking health information (51)(52)(53). In 2000, 60 million U.S. residents went online for health-related information (54).…”

“…An often overlooked problem in cancer communication is health literacy (55,56). Two reviews of readability of cancer information on the internet found that most cervical, breast, prostate, and colorectal cancer information online is at high school or college level, which is higher than readability guidelines recommend (51,53). Communications efforts about the HPV vaccine, especially those that involve online components, should be made accessible to people of all literacy levels.…”

Social and psychological determinants of participation in internet-based cancer support groups

“…Socioeconomic status has previously been shown to be a predictor for participation/non-participation in psychosocial cancer interventions [20,30]. A particular issue in internet-based group interventions in addition to this is literacy and readability, as has been studied in an English language context [31], because social interaction in internet groups is mainly textual. Though this is not the focus of our study, it is clear that such issues are highly correlated with social position and thereby add to the social inequality in use of internet interventions that we point out here.…”