eHealth Literacy: Essential Skills for Consumer Health in a Networked World

By Cameron D. Norman, H. Skinner. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2006

2,219 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Electronic health tools provide little value if the intended users lack the skills to effectively engage them. With nearly half the adult population in the United States and Canada having literacy levels below what is needed to fully engage in an information-rich society, the implications for using information technology to promote health and aid in health care, or for eHealth, are considerable. Engaging with eHealth requires a skill set, or literacy, of its own. The concept of eHealth literacy is introduced and defined as the ability to seek, find, understand, and appraise health information from electronic sources and apply the knowledge gained to addressing or solving a health problem. In this paper, a model of eHealth literacy is introduced, comprised of multiple literacy types, including an outline of a set of fundamental skills consumers require to derive direct benefits from eHealth. A profile of each literacy type with examples of the problems patient-clients might present is provided along with a resource list to aid health practitioners in supporting literacy improvement with their patient-clients across each domain. Facets of the model are illustrated through a set of clinical cases to demonstrate how health practitioners can address eHealth literacy issues in clinical or public health practice. Potential future applications of the model are discussed.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/72cc8ccf587ba325015a98a94b27d903aba95198

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Citations in the corpus

eHealth Literacy: Extending the Digital Divide to the Realm of Health Information (2012, background): “This may indicate that, as Norman and Skinner [23] point out, media literacy is only one aspect of eHealth literacy.”
Understanding Health Literacy for Strategic Health Marketing: eHealth Literacy, Health Disparities, and the Digital Divide (2008, background): “In sum, the concept of eHealth literacy can be conceptualized as a combination of context-specific and analytical skills needed to successfully navigate online health information (Norman and Skinner, 2006).”
Back to the Future: Achieving Health Equity Through Health Informatics and Digital Health (2019, background): “There is also a need for more culturally and linguistically sensitive strategies to increase access, uptake, and engagement with patient portal EHRs by racial and ethnic minorities while accommodating varying levels of electronic health and health literacy as well as technology experience and privac”
eHEALS: The eHealth Literacy Scale (2006, methodology): “Consumer-directed eHealth requires the ability to seek out, find, evaluate and appraise, integrate, and apply what is gained in electronic environments toward solving a health problem, or eHealth literacy [3].”
Predictors of eHealth Usage: Insights on The Digital Divide From the Health Information National Trends Survey 2012 (2014, background): “Research is emerging that advocates matching eHealth technology to the eHealth literacy (defined as “the ability to seek, find, understand, and appraise health information from electronic sources and apply knowledge gained to addressing or solving a health problem”) of the intended user [50-52].”
Development of the Digital Health Literacy Instrument: Measuring a Broad Spectrum of Health 1.0 and Health 2.0 Skills (2017, background): “These skills are called digital health literacy [1], or eHealth literacy [2].”
Digital literacy as a new determinant of health: A scoping review (2023, methodology): “In the included studies, digital health literacy was most often used interchangeably with the earlier term eHealth literacy [23].”
eHealth Literacy and Web 2.0 Health Information Seeking Behaviors Among Baby Boomers and Older Adults (2015, positive): “The construct of eHealth literacy represents a foundational skill set that combines six forms of literacy that extend beyond traditional definitions of health literacy and numeracy to include: (1) traditional, (2) information, (3) media, (4) health, (5) scientific, and (6) computer (Figure 1) [25].”
Understanding factors affecting patient and public engagement and recruitment to digital health interventions: a systematic review of qualitative studies (2016, neutral): “Further research is needed on novel ways to engage and educate the public about digital health as well as more investment in traditional forms of public health education [69].”
Navigating the digital divide: A systematic review of eHealth literacy in underserved populations in the United States (2016, background): “These skills, in sum, are known as eHealth literacy, a term which is defined in the literature as ‘‘the ability to seek, find, understand and appraise health information from electronic sources and apply the knowledge gained to addressing or solving a health problem’’ (14).”