Making health information meaningful: Children's health literacy practices

Abstract

Children's health and wellbeing is high on the research and policy agenda of many nations. There is a wealth of epidemiological research linking childhood circumstances and health practices with adult health. However, echoing a broader picture within child health research where children have typically been viewed as objects rather than subjects of enquiry, we know very little of how, in their everyday lives, children make sense of health-relevant information.This paper reports key findings from a qualitative study exploring how children understand food in everyday life and their ideas about the relationship between food and health. 53 children aged 9-10, attending two socio-economically contrasting schools in Northern England, participated during 2010 and 2011. Data were generated in schools through interviews and debates in small friendship groups and in the home through individual interviews. Data were analysed thematically using cross-sectional, categorical indexing.Moving beyond a focus on what children know the paper mobilises the concept of health literacy (Nutbeam, 2000), explored very little in relation to children, to conceptualise how children actively construct meaning from health information through their own embodied experiences. It draws on insights from the Social Studies of Childhood (James and Prout, 2015), which emphasise children's active participation in their everyday lives as well as New Literacy Studies (Pahl and Rowsell, 2012), which focus on literacy as a social practice. Recognising children as active health literacy practitioners has important implications for policy and practice geared towards improving child health.

Children’s learning from a Smokefree Sports programme: Implications for health education

“…Health and Clinical Excellence NICE recommendations that smoking prevention interventions geared towards children should be interactive and participatory (NICE, 2008). Similarly, that children enjoyed and valued the strongly embodied learning opportunities coheres with other studies which emphasise the importance of somatic, bodily experiences in developing healthrelevant understandings (Fairbrother et al, 2016). It also offers further evidence of the opportunities afforded by sport as an educational platform for smoking prevention (The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2011; The Community Connector (n.d.), Trigwell et al, 2015 and World Health Organisation (n.d.)).…”

“…As Harris et al (2015), argue, a health education model that emphasises only information not allowing for barriers and facilitators to the use of information that may be T his with critical health literacy which they own T towards a more nuanced picture. However, building upon work by Fairbrother et al, (2016) Samerski (2019 critiques a conceptualisation of critical health literacy which often an individualistic approach depicting citizens as cognitive agents instead of as emotional, " in many cases, is prompted and "…”

“…This study has also raises important implications for research, practice and policy in relation to child health education more broadly. In relation to research, it has contributed to the dearth of literature exploring critical health literacy (Harris et al, 2015), particularly in relation to children (Fairbrother et al, 2016;Velardo and Drummond, 2017). It has underscored that children are active health literacy practitioners, that they strive to make sense of their learning for their everyday lives and welcome the opportunity to share their contextualised understandings in order to make links.…”

Family characteristics and children's knowledge of cardiovascular risk factors

“…In addition, the school setting seems to be very effective in providing health messages (i.e. healthy eating practices), but this information should be implemented in children's daily life through parental support . Therefore, given that parental modeling and familiarity play an important role in children's developing food preferences, successful intervention efforts must involve and work directly with parents from the earliest stages of child development, to support favorable practices both in and outside the home …”

“…healthy eating practices), but this information should be implemented in children's daily life through parental support. 32 Therefore, given that parental modeling and familiarity play an important role in children's developing food preferences, successful intervention efforts must involve and work directly with parents from the earliest stages of child development, to support favorable practices both in and outside the home. 33 An interesting finding, which has not been examined previously in detail, was that children with many siblings had less knowledge of cardiovascular health and healthy lifestyle habits.…”