What does health literacy mean to children?

Abstract

This study employed the Delphi technique to define the meaning of health literacy to children and to investigate possible ways lead to them to become health literate. According to the experts' perspectives, the meaning of health literacy to children is "to perform physical and psycho-social activities with appropriate standards; being able to interact with people; cope with necessary changes and demand reasonable autonomy so as to achieve complete physical, mental and social well-being". In order to assist children develop healthy physical, psycho-social well-being so as to demonstrate that they are health literate, parents, teachers and significant others have to support and guide the children by demonstrating good practices regarding health-related behaviors. The study serves as a reference for developing healthy childhood that leads to healthy adulthood and healthy elderly.

Health literacy in childhood and youth: a systematic review of definitions and models

“…Of the 12 definitions (Table 2), two specifically targeted children younger than 12 [17, 32], another one included children from 3 to 18 years [1]. Four definitions focused on young people at different ages between 13 and 18 years [8, 18, 19, 33], while five articles considered health literacy over the life course without specifying a target group [10, 20, 34–36].…”

“…While Massey [33] specifically targeted health literacy in the health care setting, Mancuso [34] and Sørensen et al [10] stressed the relevance of health literacy in multiple health-related settings including health care, disease prevention, health promotion, and public health. The definitions by Fok and Wong [17] and Massey et al [33] were the only ones where the target group participated in the development of empirical and explorative dimensions. Gordon et al [19] developed the definition as a result of a stakeholder consultation with school health community partners and Sørensen et al [10] evolved from the results of their systematic literature review.…”

“…The acquired information can be adequately used in health-informed decision-making, which form a direct output dimension for observing or measuring children’s or young people’s health literacy [8]. Fok and Wong [17] focus not only on health information-related tasks but on actions related to physical and psycho-social activities children engage in. They point out that children are health literate once they understand how to achieve health and well-being by obtaining certain attributes as personal hygiene, emotional stability, enjoyment in school life, and the ability to cope with various circumstances [17].…”

“…Gordon et al [19] take an even more general view, stating that health literacy is building individual and community capacity to understand the components of health. The categories “requirement” and “time perspective” are the ones that specifically relate to the target group of children and young people: The first includes preconditions for being (able to be) health literate, namely, a reasonable degree of autonomy [17] or supporting external conditions, as the ways health-related materials are presented in an age appropriate manner, are culturally relevant and socially supported [1]. Lastly, health literacy is viewed as being an evolving construct or ongoing process [19], which needs to be acquired and developed during the life course [10, 20, 34].…”

“…The 30 articles were selected for the full-text analysis for the following reasons: four contained only a definition [1, 17–19], thirteen only a model [5, 20–31] and eight described a definition and a model [4, 8, 10, 32–36]. For three models two original references [37–39] were included as both provided additional insights to the model.…”