Delivery of Health and Wellness via Digital Interactive Television (iDTV): The Relevance of Health Literacy

• In Event: Entertainment Media and Health Communication

Abstract

Digital interactive television (iDTV) is often seen as a platform with great potential to deliver health and wellness services directly to people. Despite the advantages of e-Health, public engagement with such services is still limited. Our research assumes that health literacy plays a key role on users’ engagement with this kind of services and we postulate it is one of the main predictors of users’ attitudes and behaviours towards iDTV health services. Our main goal is to identify and describe the factors that limit the efficiency of e-Health interventions and the potential depicted in this context by specific technologies – i.e. iDTV.
In this paper, we shall presents the main results from one of two formative studies, conducted during the first phase of the research project, in order to guide the actual development of the iDTV applications in the realm of this project. The study was conducted in a Southern European country – Portugal - between 2012 and 2013. We found that the groups that depict limited health literacy are also the ones least interested in digital TV services related to health and wellness. Likewise, in a former evaluation study of the two interactive applications developed in this project, we found that the higher the education level, the greater the health literacy of the participants.
Following this, we propose that in order for people to realize the actual benefits of using these applications, it is essential to tailor both content and services in accordance with the depicted level of health literacy.
Keywords: Healthcare, wellness, health literacy, e-Health, digital interactive television.

Authors

• Manuel José Damásio, U Lusófona

• Célia Quico, Lusofona U

• Iolanda Verissimo, CICANT-ULHT

• Sara Henriques, Lusofona U