How socioeconomically disadvantaged people access, understand, appraise, and apply health information: A qualitative study exploring health literacy skills

Coraline Stormacq, Annie Oulevey Bachmann, Stephan Van den Broucke and Patrick Bodenmann

PLOS ONE, 2023, vol. 18, issue 8, 1-32

Abstract: Objectives: Health literacy, or a person’s competence to access, understand, appraise and apply health information, can be considered a mediating factor between socioeconomic characteristics and health disparities. Socioeconomically disadvantaged people in particular present with less health literacy skills. To develop targeted interventions tailored to their real needs, it is important to understand how they function and what difficulties they encounter when dealing with health information. The purpose of this study was to explore their experiences when accessing, understanding, appraising, and applying health information in their everyday lives. Methods: Semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted with 12 socioeconomically disadvantaged adults living in the community in Switzerland (age range: 44–60 years old). Results: Thematic analysis of the interviews yielded four themes, describing the health literacy processes of participants, related barriers, and compensatory strategies used: Financial insecurity triggers the need for health information; Pathway 1: Physicians as ideal (but expensive) interlocutors; Pathway 2: The internet as a suboptimal alternative; and Pathway 3: Relatives as a default resource. The progression of socioeconomically disadvantaged people in the health literacy process is like an ‘obstacle course’, with numerous steps taken backwards before they can develop compensatory strategies to overcome the barriers to obtaining health information. Conclusions: Financial deprivation seems to be the most important factor contributing to health literacy barriers. Appraising health information is the health literacy skill with which socioeconomically disadvantaged people struggle the most. Physician-based, individual skills-based, organizational, and policy-based interventions are needed to help them overcome their health literacy challenges.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0288381 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 88381&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0288381

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0288381

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().