Health Information For People Research Articles

Characteristics and Correlates of Health Information Literacy Among Patients With Type 2 Diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome: A Cross-Sectional Study.

The purpose of the study was to examine the characteristics and the influential effect of individual and social contextual factors on health information literacy among Chinese patients with type 2 diabetes coexisting with metabolic syndrome. Following convenience sampling, a total of 225 patients with type 2 diabetes coexisting with metabolic syndrome were recruited from a tertiary hospital in a suburban area of Beijing, China. Participants' information was gathered through a set of self-reported questionnaires. Descriptive statistics, normality test, correlational analysis, univariate analysis, multiple linear regression, and logistic regression analysis were adopted to examine the potential factors of personal and social contextual resource related to health information literacy based on the health empowerment theory. The health information literacy in this current sample was limited, with a mean score of 16.83 ± 2.96. Correlational analysis showed that self-management knowledge, attitude, and practice for metabolic syndrome; self-efficacy; health problem-solving; resilience; and chronic illness resources were significantly and positively related to health information literacy. Logistic regression analysis showed that self-management knowledge, health problem-solving, and the chronic illness resources were significantly correlated with health information literacy after controlling covariates. Overall, the health information literacy among Chinese patients with type 2 diabetes coexisting with metabolic syndrome is suboptimal. Study findings demonstrated that personal and social contextual resources factors are significantly related to health information literacy. Health care professionals should consider strategies to enhance people's health information literacy level and promote individuals' health problem-solving, enhance chronic illness resources, and improve self-management knowledge when developing tailored interventions.

Community-Engaged Participatory Methods to Address Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Questioning Young People's Health Information Needs With a Resource Website: Participatory Design and Development Study.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ+) young people (aged 15 to 25 years) face unique health challenges and often lack resources to adequately address their health information needs related to gender and sexuality. Beyond information access issues, LGBTQ+ young people may need information resources to be designed and organized differently compared with their cisgender and heterosexual peers and, because of identity exploration, may have different information needs related to gender and sexuality than older people. The objective of our study was to work with a community partner to develop an inclusive and comprehensive new website to address LGBTQ+ young people's health information needs. To design this resource website using a community-engaged approach, our objective required working with and incorporating content and design recommendations from young LGBTQ+ participants. We conducted interviews (n=17) and participatory design sessions (n=11; total individual participants: n=25) with LGBTQ+ young people to understand their health information needs and elicit design recommendations for the new website. We involved our community partner in all aspects of the research and design process. We present participants' desired resources, health topics, and technical website features that can facilitate information seeking for LGBTQ+ young people exploring their sexuality and gender and looking for health resources. We describe how filters can allow people to find information related to intersecting marginalized identities and how dark mode can be a privacy measure to avoid unwanted identity disclosure. We reflect on our design process and situate the website development in previous critical reflections on participatory research with marginalized communities. We suggest recommendations for future LGBTQ+ health websites based on our research and design experiences and final website design, which can enable LGBTQ+ young people to access information, find the right information, and navigate identity disclosure concerns. These design recommendations include filters, a reduced number of links, conscientious choice of graphics, dark mode, and resources tailored to intersecting identities. Meaningful collaboration with community partners throughout the design process is vital for developing technological resources that meet community needs. We argue for community partner leadership rather than just involvement in community-based research endeavors at the intersection of human-computer interaction and health.

Research on older people's health information search behavior based on risk perception in social networks-A case study in China during COVID-19.

ObjectiveCOVID-19 has caused great loss of human life and livelihoods. The dissemination of health information in online social networks increased during the pandemic's quarantine. Older people are the most vulnerable group in sudden public health emergencies, and they have the disadvantage of infection rates and online search for health information. This study explores the relationship between the health risk perception and health information search behavior of older people in social networks, to help them make better use of the positive role of social networks in public health emergencies.MethodBased on the Risk Information Search and Processing model, and in the specific context of COVID-19, this study redefines health risk perception as a second-order construct of four first-order factors (perceived probability, perceived severity, perceived controllability, and perceived familiarity), and constructs a research model of the health risk perception and health information search behavior of older people. An online survey of people over 55 years old was conducted through convenience sampling in China from February 2020 to March 2020.ResultsA total of 646 older adults completed the survey. The structural equation model showed that health risk perception is a second-order factor (H1), that health risk perception has significant positive effects on health information search behavior (H2: β = 0.470, T = 11.577, P < 0.001), and that health risk perception has significant positive effects on affective response (H3: β = 0.536, T = 17.356, P < 0.001). In addition, affective response has a significant positive mediating effect on information sufficiency (H4: β = 0.435, T = 12.231, P < 0.001), and information sufficiency has a significant positive mediating effect on health information search behavior (H5: β = 0.136, T = 3.081, P = 0.002).ConclusionThe study results indicate that the health risk perception of older people during the COVID-19 outbreak not only directly affected their health information search behavior, but also had an indirect impact on their health information search behavior by affecting affective response and information sufficiency.

The Effect of Online Health Information Seeking on Physician-Patient Relationships: Systematic Review.

BackgroundThe internet has now become part of human life and is constantly changing people's way of life. With the increasing popularity of online health information (OHI), it has been found that OHI can affect the physician-patient relationship by influencing patient behaviors.ObjectiveThis study aims to systematically investigate the impact of OHI-seeking behavior on the physician-patient relationship.MethodsLiterature retrieval was conducted on 4 databases (Web of Science, PubMed, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, SinoMed), and the time limit for literature publication was before August 1, 2021.ResultsWe selected 53 target papers (42 [79%] English papers and 11 [21%] Chinese papers) that met the inclusion criteria. Of these, 31 (58%) papers believe that patients’ OHI behavior can enable them to participate in their own medical care, improve patient compliance, and improve the physician-patient relationship. In addition, 14 (26%) papers maintain a neutral attitude, some believing that OHI behavior has no significant effect on doctors and patients and others believing that due to changes in the factors affecting OHI behavior, they will have a negative or a positive impact. Furthermore, 8 (15%) papers believe that OHI search behavior has a negative impact on doctors and patients, while 6 (11%) papers show that OHI reduces Chinese patients’ trust in doctors.ConclusionsOur main findings showed that (1) OHI-seeking behavior has an impact on patients' psychology, behavior, and evaluation of doctors; (2) whether patients choose to discuss OHI with doctors has different effects on the physician-patient relationship; and (3) the negative impact of OHI on China’s internet users is worthy of attention. Due to the low quality of OHI, poor health information literacy, short physician-patient communication time, and various types of negative news, patients' trust in doctors has declined, thus affecting the physician-patient relationship. Improvement of people's health information literacy and the quality of OHI are important factors that promote the positive impact of OHI on the physician-patient relationship.

Forecasting the Suitability of Online Mental Health Information for Effective Self-Care Developing Machine Learning Classifiers Using Natural Language Features.

Background: Online mental health information represents important resources for people living with mental health issues. Suitability of mental health information for effective self-care remains understudied, despite the increasing needs for more actionable mental health resources, especially among young people. Objective: We aimed to develop Bayesian machine learning classifiers as data-based decision aids for the assessment of the actionability of credible mental health information for people with mental health issues and diseases. Methods: We collected and classified creditable online health information on mental health issues into generic mental health (GEN) information and patient-specific (PAS) mental health information. GEN and PAS were both patient-oriented health resources developed by health authorities of mental health and public health promotion. GENs were non-classified online health information without indication of targeted readerships; PASs were developed purposefully for specific populations (young, elderly people, pregnant women, and men) as indicated by their website labels. To ensure the generalisability of our model, we chose to develop a sparse Bayesian machine learning classifier using Relevance Vector Machine (RVM). Results: Using optimisation and normalisation techniques, we developed a best-performing classifier through joint optimisation of natural language features and min-max normalisation of feature frequencies. The AUC (0.957), sensitivity (0.900), and specificity (0.953) of the best model were statistically higher (p < 0.05) than other models using parallel optimisation of structural and semantic features with or without feature normalisation. We subsequently evaluated the diagnostic utility of our model in the clinic by comparing its positive (LR+) and negative likelihood ratios (LR−) and 95% confidence intervals (95% C.I.) as we adjusted the probability thresholds with the range of 0.1 and 0.9. We found that the best pair of LR+ (18.031, 95% C.I.: 10.992, 29.577) and LR− (0.100, 95% C.I.: 0.068, 0.148) was found when the probability threshold was set to 0.45 associated with a sensitivity of 0.905 (95%: 0.867, 0.942) and specificity of 0.950 (95% C.I.: 0.925, 0.975). These statistical properties of our model suggested its applicability in the clinic. Conclusion: Our study found that PAS had significant advantage over GEN mental health information regarding information actionability, engagement, and suitability for specific populations with distinct mental health issues. GEN is more suitable for general mental health information acquisition, whereas PAS can effectively engage patients and provide more effective and needed self-care support. The Bayesian machine learning classifier developed provided automatic tools to support decision making in the clinic to identify more actionable resources, effective to support self-care among different populations.

A critical review of emerging technologies for tackling COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID‐19 pandemic affects people in various ways and continues to spread globally. Researches are ongoing to develop vaccines and traditional methods of Medicine and Biology have been applied in diagnosis and treatment. Though there are success stories of recovered cases as of November 10, 2020, there are no approved treatments and vaccines for COVID‐19. As the pandemic continues to spread, current measures rely on prevention, surveillance, and containment. In light of this, emerging technologies for tackling COVID‐19 become inevitable. Emerging technologies including geospatial technology, artificial intelligence (AI), big data, telemedicine, blockchain, 5G technology, smart applications, Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), robotics, and additive manufacturing are substantially important for COVID‐19 detecting, monitoring, diagnosing, screening, surveillance, mapping, tracking, and creating awareness. Therefore, this study aimed at providing a comprehensive review of these technologies for tackling COVID‐19 with emphasis on the features, challenges, and country of domiciliation. Our results show that performance of the emerging technologies is not yet stable due to nonavailability of enough COVID‐19 dataset, inconsistency in some of the dataset available, nonaggregation of the dataset due to contrasting data format, missing data, and noise. Moreover, the security and privacy of people's health information is not totally guaranteed. Thus, further research is required to strengthen the current technologies and there is a strong need for the emergence of a robust computationally intelligent model for early differential diagnosis of COVID‐19.

FedHealth: A Federated Transfer Learning Framework for Wearable Healthcare

With the rapid development of computing technology, wearable devices make it easy to get access to people's health information. Smart healthcare achieves great success by training machine learning models on a large quantity of user personal data. However, there are two critical challenges. First, user data often exist in the form of isolated islands, making it difficult to perform aggregation without compromising privacy security. Second, the models trained on the cloud fail on personalization. In this article, we propose FedHealth, the first federated transfer learning framework for wearable healthcare to tackle these challenges. FedHealth performs data aggregation through federated learning, and then builds relatively personalized models by transfer learning. Wearable activity recognition experiments and real Parkinson's disease auxiliary diagnosis application have evaluated that FedHealth is able to achieve accurate and personalized healthcare without compromising privacy and security. FedHealth is general and extensible in many healthcare applications.

Thrive Health: a New Venture Connecting Patient Advocacy to Well-Being.

As part of the British Columbia government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, an online self-assessment tool was launched to help with symptom assessment and to provide necessary health information for people. The tool was developed by Thrive Health, a company which has been working to improve the delivery of e-health in Canada since 2016, with an emphasis on well-being. This review captures this company’s purpose and role in addressing the needs of patients and healthcare providers in the community, to change the definition of healthcare. In pursuing this goal, Thrive Health is innovating to make the long lost connection between physical and mental health through an online app with design features supported by research around subjective well-being, as a measurement of effective community development and human progress. This very characteristic is what establishes the company’s uniqueness among other similar patient advocacy groups, and connects patient advocacy to happiness and well-being.

Development of health literacy among postgraduate students: From information literacy perspective

OBJECTIVES:Involving the patients in health-related decisions requires high health literacy. Health literacy is related to the concept of information literacy through its emphasis on information skills. Hence, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between information literacy and health literacy.STUDY DESIGN:We carried out an original research.MATERIALS AND METHODS:This is an applied research that is carried out in a survey method. The statistical population of this study is MSc and PhD students at School of Health Management and Information Science in Iran University of Medical Sciences who were selected by stratified random sampling. A standard health literacy questionnaire including access dimensions, reading skills, comprehension, evaluation, decision-making, and application of health information was used to assess the health literacy status of the students. To measure information literacy, the questionnaire includes identifying information needs, locating information, organizing information, and evaluating information were used. The data were analyzed by tests of one-sample t-test, Pearson correlation, and simple linear regression with spss software version 18 produced by IBM located at New York.RESULTS:The results showed that the level of information literacy among students was higher than the average level. The average of information literacy rate in the sample is 49.09. In this regard, the most frequent information is gained from the internet, interacting with friends, and asking practitioners and health workers. In addition, there is a positive and significant relationship between all dimensions of information literacy with health literacy and information literacy affects 35.4% of health literacy changes.CONCLUSIONS:It can be said that information literacy is a predictor of health literacy. Furthermore, the pattern of people's health information has moved to new information environments and to improve health having sufficient information seeking and information literacy skills are essential.

Alberta's Data and Analytic Strategy: Leveraging Linked Data to Drive Innovation

BackgroundThe Province of Alberta, Canada, maintains a mature data environment with linkable administrative and clinical data dating back up to 30 years. Alberta has a single payer, publicly funded and administered, universal health system, which maintains multiple administrative data sets.&#x0D; Main AimThe main aim of the strategy is to fully maximize the data assets in the province to drive health system health system innovation, with a focus on improving health outcomes and quality of life.&#x0D; Methods/ApproachThe Alberta Ministry of Health has created the Secondary Use Data Access (SUDA) initiative to leverage its administrative health data. SUDA envisions strengthening partnerships between the public and private sectors through two main data access approaches. The first is direct access to de-identified data held within the Alberta Health data warehouse by key health system stakeholders (e.g. academic institutions, professional associations, regulatory colleges). The second is indirect access to private and not-for-profit organizations, using a data access safe haven (DASH) approach. Indirect access is achieved through private sector investments to a trusted third party that hires analysts placed within the Ministry of Health offices.&#x0D; ResultsStaffing agreements and privacy impact assessments are in place. Indirect access includes a multiple stakeholder steering committee to vet and prioritize projects. Private and not-for-profit stakeholders do not have access to raw data, but rather receive access to aggregated data and statistical models. All data disclosures are done by Ministry staff to ensure compliance with Alberta's Health Information Act. Direct access has been established for one professional organization and one academic institution, with access restricted to de-identified data.&#x0D; ConclusionThe Secondary Use Data Access initiative uses a safe haven approach to leveraging data to provide a more secure approach to data access. It reduces the need to provision data outside of the data warehouse while improving timely access to data. The approach provides assurances that people's health information is held secure, while also being used to create health system improvements.

Alberta's Data Mobilization Strategy: Leveraging Linked Data for Innovation

IntroductionThe Province of Alberta maintains a mature data ecosystem with linkable data dating back over 30 years. The population-based nature of the data makes this a valuable asset for driving analytics to support health system innovation, with a focus on improving health outcomes and quality of life.&#x0D; Objectives and ApproachAlberta Health has created the Secondary Use Data Access (SUDA) initiative to leverage its administrative health data. SUDA envisions strengthening partnerships between the public and private sectors with two main access approaches. The first is direct access to de-identified data held within the Alberta Health data warehouse by key health system stakeholders (e.g. academic instituions, Health Quality Council of Alberta, regulatory colleges). The second is indirect access to private and not-for-profit stakeholders, using a safe haven approach. Indirect access is achieved through private sector investments to a trusted third party that hires analysts to be placed within Alberta Health.&#x0D; ResultsStaffing agreements and privacy impact assessments have been drafted to support the work. The indirect access route includes a multiple stakeholder steering committee to vette and prioritize projects. Private and not-for-profit stakeholders do not have access to the data, but rather receive access to aggregate data and statitstical models. All disclosures are done by Alberta Health staff to ensure compliance with Alberta's Health Information Act. Direct access has been established for the Alberta Medical Association as part of a long standing data sharing agreement, with access restricted to de-identified data only. To date, seven industry proposals for analytics have been received and are currently being actioned.&#x0D; Conclusion/ImplicationsThe Secondary Use Data Access initiative uses a safe haven approach to leveraging data. It reduces the need to provision data outside of the data warehouse and allows for better monitoring of access and use of data. The approach provides assurances that people's health information is secure.

Analysing health data sources to inform chronic disease management decisions of health insurers: A mixed methods study

ABSTRACTBackground and Objective: Both health care providers and payers recognize the need to improve chronic disease care. Chronic disease management relies on high-quality health information for people with, and at risk of developing, chronic diseases. This article focuses on the health insurance sector and investigates ways that payment claims data and other data sources can provide useful information to support chronic disease management interventions.Methods and Results: In this mixed methods study, we first examine methods of selecting target populations from insurance claims data for common chronic conditions—diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and mental health disorders. The analysis of claims data reveals data quality issues and indicates that other data sources should be considered to provide additional information. We undertake a qualitative review of factors influencing the development of information systems for chronic disease management that use multiple data sources.Conclusions: Claims data should be supplemented with other data to inform chronic disease management. The article proposes a conceptual framework with four domains that need to be considered when developing chronic disease information systems using multiple data sources—information requirements, data sources, data collection, and information systems integration. There are policy and organizational factors that influence framework implementation.

Health Information Infrastructure for People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (I/DD) Living in Supported Accommodation: Communication, Co-Ordination and Integration of Health Information

ABSTRACT People with intellectual and/or developmental disability (I/DD) commonly have complex health care needs, but little is known about how their health information is managed in supported accommodation, and across health services providers. This study aimed to describe the current health information infrastructure (i.e., how data and information are collected, stored, communicated, and used) for people with I/DD living in supported accommodation in Australia. It involved a scoping review and synthesis of research, policies, and health documents relevant in this setting. Iterative database and hand searches were conducted across peer-reviewed articles internationally in English and grey literature in Australia (New South Wales) up to September 2015. Data were extracted from the selected relevant literature and analyzed for content themes. Expert stakeholders were consulted to verify the authors’ interpretations of the information and content categories. The included 286 sources (peer-reviewed n = 27; grey literature n = 259) reflect that the health information for people with I/DD in supported accommodation is poorly communicated, coordinated and integrated across isolated systems. ‘Work-as-imagined’ as outlined in policies, does not align with ‘work-as-done’ in reality. This gap threatens the quality of care and safety of people with I/DD in these settings. The effectiveness of the health information infrastructure and services for people with I/DD can be improved by integrating the information sources and placing people with I/DD and their supporters at the centre of the information exchange process.

Qualitative methods for studying health information behaviors

ABSTRACTQualitative methods can be used to understand and interpret human behaviors in a variety of contexts, including people's health information behaviors. This panel will discuss current applications of qualitative methods in this context, with emphasis on three examples: visual elicitation techniques, qualitative content analysis, and grounded theory approaches. The audience will be encouraged to discuss additional qualitative approaches and mixed methods, and how they might be applied to studies of health information behaviors.

Some current threats to confidentiality in medicine

Social, technical and legal conditions of the current practice of medicine make it necessary to insist on certain actions and circumstances that may jeopardize the confidentiality of information, offered by patients to their health providers. Therefore, some effects of the current Chilean law are analyzed in this respect, regarding access to data from the clinical record of a patient. Also, the risks of putting certain data on social networking sites are analyzed, as well as some of its effects on clinical practice. The reasons because of mandatory reporting of diseases, meaning danger to public health, is allowed, are mentioned. We also discuss the difficulties involved in managing the results of preventative health screenings and its knowledge by third parties, as well as some possible violations of personal privacy, regarding dissemination of some people health information and its further mention or figuration in mass media. We conclude that it is a must for both physicians and other health team members, to safeguard confidentiality of data to which they have had access, as well as the need to know the relevant law, in order to respect human dignity of patients, each one as a person. We address the attention to the possibility that, practicing in a different way, it could endanger the reliability of clinical records, also impairing the quality of people's health care.

Abstract 5039: Physical activity is associated with improved quality of life in cancer survivors: A population-based analysis

Abstract Introduction: The CDC recommends cancer survivors engage in 150 minutes of moderate- or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity, along with 2 sessions of strength training, every week. We sought to determine whether meeting these guidelines was correlated with improved quality of life in a large contemporary population-based sample of cancer survivors. Methods: Data regarding quality of life, physical activity and other covariates were obtained from the 2010 National Health Interview Survey, the largest source of health information of people in the United States. Quality of life was determined by the answer to the question, “In general, would you say your quality of life is…”, with potential responses of “excellent”, “very good”, “good”, “fair” and “poor”. Correlation between meeting CDC guidelines and self-reported quality of life was assessed with univariate and multivariate analyses using SUDAAN software. Results: A weighted total of 19,441,052 cancer survivors in the United States were included in this analysis. Only 10.4% of cancer survivors met physical activity guidelines. Meeting guidelines was significantly correlated with White race, young age, cancer type, higher education, and private insurance on univariate analysis (all p&amp;lt;0.01). Meeting guidelines was also correlated with decreased fatigue and higher self-reported quality of life, physical health, mental health status, and reported satisfaction with social activities and relationships (all p&amp;lt;0.01). On multivariate analysis controlling for race, age, sex, cancer type, education, and insurance, meeting physical activity guidelines remained significantly correlated with higher quality of life (OR=3.69, 95% CI: 1.2-11.6, p=0.03). Conclusions: Only 10.4% of cancer survivors meet physical activity guidelines. Meeting guidelines is significantly associated with improved quality of life, independent of other sociodemographic factors, and should therefore be encouraged. Multivariate analysis for “good-excellent” quality of lifeParameterOdds Ratio (95% CI)P-value Met physical activity guidelinesYes3.69 (1.2-11.6)0.03 No1.00RaceWhite1.000.34 Black0.84 (0.53-1.34)Asian0.42 (0.16-1.10)Hispanic0.96 (0.60-1.56Other0.48 (0.12-1.85)Age&amp;lt;401.000.01 40-600.58 (0.31-1.09&amp;gt;601.43 (0.70-2.89)SexMale1.000.07 Female1.48 (.97-2.27)Cancer typeBreast1.000.09 Cervical1.03 (0.49-2.19)Colorectal0.85 (0.42-1.71)Lung0.37 (0.17-.79)Lymphoma/Leukemia0.75 (0.34-1.65)Melanoma1.08 (0.47-2.48)Ovarian0.79 (0.19-3.22)Prostate1.59 (0.71-3.56)Thyroid0.42 (0.11-1.60)Uterine0.91 (0.44-1.86Other1.15 (0.73-1.84)Education level&amp;lt;Grade 121.00&amp;lt;0.01 High School Grad1.51 (1.02-2.23)Associate Degree2.82 (1.78-4.46)Bachelor's Degree4.83 (2.55-9.14)Master's Degree3.66 (1.64-8.16Professional/Doctorate6.31 (1.61-24.78)Insurance statusNone1.00&amp;lt;0.01 Medicare0.86 (0.41-1.78)Medicaid0.64 (0.32-1.28)Military0.56 (0.21-1.51Private3.08 (1.59-5.97) Citation Format: Apoorva Tewari, Melinda Irwin, Anees Chagpar. Physical activity is associated with improved quality of life in cancer survivors: A population-based analysis. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 5039. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-5039

Design of an oral health information brochure for at-risk individuals

Objective: Our aim was to develop written resource material for use in the Oral Health Information through Community Pharmacists project. Poor oral health is associated with cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Many people do not access dental services on a regular basis; however, they may access community pharmacies for help and advice about oral health problems. Community pharmacists may be a valuable point of oral health information for people with heart disease or diabetes. Design: This paper reports the development of the written resource material for the project groups. Methods: Brochure development was guided by Fishbein and Yzer’s integrative model, and pre-tested with seven focus groups representing the potential target groups. Feedback from the focus groups was analysed concurrently and modified versions of the brochures were presented to subsequent groups. Results: The use of both written and visual messages enhanced the readability of the brochures for the focus groups with attendant Flesch Reading Ease scores of 77.4 and 79.4, while the ‘Make a plan’ section prompted future action planning amongst the participants. Conclusion: Well-designed patient education materials with good content, aesthetics and readability are important to deliver health messages within the context of a planned intervention. The three final brochures will be used in the intervention trial of the project.

Gender differences in health information behaviour: a Finnish population-based survey

Narrowing the gaps in health outcomes, including those between men and women, has been a pronounced goal on the agenda of the Finnish health authorities since the mid-1980s. But still there is a huge gap in favour of women when it comes to life expectancy at birth. People's health information behaviour, that is how people seek, obtain, evaluate, categorize and use relevant health-related information to perform desired health behaviours, is a critical prerequisite to appropriate and consistent performances of these behaviours. With respect to gender, it has been noted that men often are unwilling and lack the motivation to engage with health-related information. The purpose of this study was to investigate how gender affects health information behaviour in the Finnish population aged 18-65 years. The survey data were collected via a questionnaire which was posted to a representative cross section consisting of 1500 Finnish citizens. The statistical analysis consists of ANOVA F-tests and Fisher's exact tests. The results show that women were more interested in and reported much more active seeking of health-related information, paid more attention to potential worldwide pandemics and were much more attentive as to how the goods they purchase in everyday life affect their health than men did. Women also reported receiving far more informal health-related information from close family members, other kin and friends/workmates than men did. Thus, to succeed in public health promotion and interventions the measures taken should be much more sensitive to the gender gap in health information behaviour.

Health information needs on diseases: A coding schema development for analyzing health questions in social Q&amp;A

AbstractHealth‐related questions users posted on social Q&amp;A sites are a representation of consumers' real‐life needs for health information. To tap into this source for a deeper understanding of general people's health information needs and information searching behavior, this poster reports an attempt to develop a coding schema for analyzing disease‐related questions in social Q&amp;A sites. The developed schema could serve as a basis for analyzing a wide range of topics in health. It could also guide the implementation of automatic data mining approaches to analyze the vast amount of data generated on social media platforms.

Using Radio to Increase Access to Health Information for People with Disabilities

Health information traditionally has been presented in oral and written formats by elders, teachers, mass media, and health care professionals. Today's telecommunications technology provides an ever-expanding wealth of health informational resources. However, some Americans with visual impairment and physical disabilities may have limited access to technology products and services. Others do not have adaptive devices to read for them. Until we breach the digital divide, community health educators can use radio broadcasts to provide current information about health to this audience.