Abstract
Evidence shows that vulnerable populations have lower levels of health literacy, resulting in poor health-seeking behavior and poor uptake of diagnostics. Being health literate promotes health care-seeking behavior and improves engagement with diagnostic services. In this editorial, I define health literacy in the context of access to technology for enabling disease screening, diagnosis and linkage to care. I refer to health literacy in this context as diagnostics literacy. The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that vulnerable populations are disproportionately disadvantaged by the disruptive measures put in place to control the spread of the virus. Many vulnerable populations are still experiencing short-and longer-term socio-economic consequences. I propose a multi-level diagnostics literacy advocacy model to help improve diagnostic uptake among vulnerable populations.
Highlights
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have scaled up the development of new diagnostics [1]
Recent literature shows that 47% of the world’s population has poor access to diagnostics and are failing to achieve the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) COVID-19 testing targets of one test per 1000 people per day [2]
Improving access to diagnostics by removing barriers may reduce annual premature deaths by 1.1 million (2.5% of total annual deaths) and morbidity by 38.5 million (1.8% of all conditions) annual disability-adjusted life-years lost in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) [3]
Summary
Conduct a key stakeholder workshop and invite all relevant community leaders, policy makers and implementers. Establish a disease diagnostics advocacy group comprising diagnostics experts, health promotion experts and health experts. Develop and implement tailored disease testing and linkage-to-care advocacy programs for different population groups
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