Baumeister, Annika ORCID: 0000-0002-9451-201X (2024). Health Literacy in the Context of Migration: Analysis of Determinants and Intervention Effectiveness to Improve Health Literacy in Migrants. PhD thesis, Universität zu Köln.
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Abstract
Background: Health literacy (HL), understood as the “knowledge, motivation, and compe-tences to access, understand, appraise, and apply health information” (Sørensen et al., 2012, p. 3), is widely considered to be a crucial factor for effective disease management and autonomous health-related decision-making. It is a multidimensional construct com-pounded by societal and environmental factors, situational conditions, and personal deter-minants. International studies found that migrants are more likely to face difficulties in pro-cessing health information than persons without migration experience. These difficulties can have various reasons, for example, language (barriers) or a lack of familiarity with a new country's health system. Gender has been associated with HL, but quantifiable effects are often small and ambiguous. In the context of migration, it is still unclear how personal factors such as gender, situational or systemic conditions affect HL in the healthcare do-main and how HL can be improved by tailored interventions. Aims: Drawing on the integrated model of HL (Sørensen et al., 2012), this PhD project aimed to investigate 1) which factors influence HL in transcultural healthcare interactions, 2) whether interventions to improve HL in migrants are effective, and 3) whether female or male migrants benefit differently from these interventions. Methods: Three studies contributed to this dissertation. Studies I and II consisted of two different qualitative content analyses (Kuckartz, 2019) based on five focus group discus-sions with 31 healthcare professionals (HCP) in Germany. Both aimed at exploring the determinants of HL in transcultural healthcare interactions from the perspective of HCPs. Study I examined how societal and environmental factors as well as situational and per-sonal determinants influence HL in these settings. Study II focused on gender as a person-al factor of HL, examining its influence on healthcare interactions between HCPs and per-sons with a migrant background. In study III, a Cochrane effectiveness review of interven-tion studies to improve HL in migrants was conducted, following the Cochrane recom-mended methodology and PRISMA guidelines (Higgins et al., 2023). Results were summa-rised in meta-analyses, whenever possible, or synthesised narratively. Main findings of studies I-III are discussed and contextualised against the results of a Cochrane Qualitative Evidence Synthesis (QES; Aldin et al., in press) linked to study III. The QES included quali-tative studies with participants of the interventions in the effectiveness review. Results: In Study I, challenges such as a systemic lack of time and economic pressure were cited as key barriers to an effective and satisfactory flow of information between HCP and their migrant patients. The need for additional time and resources, including fund-ing for professional interpreters and cultural mediators was emphasised. A shared migrant background of HCPs and their patients positively influenced informational exchange and building of trustful relationships. Some HCPs, however, perceived this personal factor as stressful, particularly when interpreting for others. In Study II, gender-related aspects, such as considerable language barriers among Turkish migrant women in comparison to Turkish men, were identified as barriers to accessing, understanding, and appraising health infor-mation in healthcare interactions. Study III included 28 RCTs and six cluster-RCTs (8,249 participants in total) that addressed HL either as a concept or its components. The review showed that certain intervention types such as self-management programmes, HL skills building courses, or audio/-visual education without personal feedback, can improve HL among migrants (e.g. functional HL skills or disease-specific knowledge), particularly in the short-term. A considerable research gap was discovered regarding gender; it remains un-clear whether migrant women or men benefit differently from HL interventions. Discussion: In transcultural healthcare interactions, the relationality and context-sensitivity of HL is particularly evident, indicating that well-known issues in the German health system exacerbate in the context of migration. System-related factors such as a lack of time and economic pressure or personal determinants such as gender and a shared migrant back-ground were found to play a vital role for a successful flow of health information. These factors interact and reinforce each other and are closely interwoven with accessing, un-derstanding, and appraising as well as applying health information. The findings of this dis-sertation highlight that HCPs are crucial in facilitating the individual HL of their patients. However, they can only act under the given systemic conditions, which currently impede their ability to respond adequately to the diverse HL needs of all of their patients. At the level of individual HL promotion, study III found that some types of HL interventions have the potential to mitigate certain HL-specific challenges such as understanding health infor-mation. However, despite a rigorous grouping procedure, there was considerable hetero-geneity between studies, making it inappropriate to draw general conclusions. Conclusion: Shifting the focus of HL research and practice to health systems and gov-ernments and their responsibility to create the right conditions for HL, rather than on indi-viduals, HCPs and organisations (inter-)acting within the system, seems necessary in order to develop and implement sustainable interventions to strengthen HL. There is a need for well-designed intervention studies that 1) explicitly aim at improving HL, 2) are target group-specific and gender-sensitive, 3) are collaborative in design, and 4) measure HL over time (> 6 months after the intervention) with validated measurement tools.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD thesis) | ||||||||
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-737127 | ||||||||
Date: | 2024 | ||||||||
Language: | English | ||||||||
Faculty: | Faculty of Medicine | ||||||||
Divisions: | CERES - Cologne Center for Ethics, Rights, Economics, and Social Sciences of Health | ||||||||
Subjects: | Social sciences Medical sciences Medicine |
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Date of oral exam: | 4 September 2024 | ||||||||
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Refereed: | Yes | ||||||||
URI: | http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/73712 |
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