Digital Health Literacy on COVID-19 for All: Co-creation and Evaluation of Interventions for Ethnic Minorities and Chinese People With Chronic Illnesses in Hong Kong

August 21, 2023 updated by: Dr Angela Leung, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
During the pandemic, people are anxious for information, and electronic platform serves the purpose of having first-hand health information and spreading it to massive population within a short time. However, the source and credibility of the influx of online information are hard to be verified. Digital health literacy (DHL) is the capacity to access, understand, evaluate, and apply health information from electronic sources, which is an important attribute that everyone should possess. Recent studies from our group in Hong Kong have shown that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, DHL is an issue facing people of all ages, especially ethnic minorities (EMs), people with chronic illnesses (PWCI), and professional and lay caregivers (CGs). Considering that, the present research project aims to co-create DHL interventions with these three groups of people to meet their specific needs in DHL, in addition, to assess the efficacy of the DHL interventions on eHealth literacy, vaccine literacy, and actions taken for COVID-19 prevention. The present research is a 4-year project, involving three phases. Phase 1 involves focus group interviews and cognitive interviews with the three groups of people for developing interventions and evaluating the proposed interventions. Phase 2 involves individual interviews with the three groups of people for testing the feasibility and acceptability of the interventions. Phase 3 involves a 6-month longitudinal quantitative research, testing for the efficacy of the interventions in three dimensions: literacy, attitude, and behavior. Participants from the three groups will be invited to join virtual or face-to-face training, watch short videos on social media, participate in virtual bi-weekly group discussion, and fill in questionnaires for five times during the course of the study. This co-creation of new knowledge by stakeholders and researchers is expected to increase the uptake of the research outcomes and adoption of the DHL interventions.

Study Overview

Status

Not yet recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

528

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Contact

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Child
  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • ethnic minorities (EMs), people with chronic illnesses (PWCI), and caregivers (CGs)
  • able to use a computer, smartphone, or laptop to access the Internet at home

Exclusion Criteria:

  • diagnosis of an acute psychotic disease or life-limiting condition; having a visual, auditory, or fine motor disorder.

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Prevention
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: Single

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Digital health literacy intervention
The interventions will be developed based on the Best Practices for Digital Health Literacy, WHO health literacy toolkits and the findings of the interviews. The content to be covered in the intervention will include news about vaccines; alerts about COVID-19 preventive measures; guidelines on social distancing, COVID-19 screening test arrangements, vaccination and compulsory quarantines; COVID-19-related law enforcement; and self-monitoring of COVID-19 symptoms
Behavioral: Digital health literacy intervention
Participants from the intervention group will be invited to join virtual or face-to-face training, watch short videos on social media, participate in virtual bi-weekly group discussion, and fill in questionnaires for five times during the course of the study
No Intervention: Control
No intervention will be provided to the control group

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
eHealth Literacy Efficacy
Time Frame: baseline, 8-week post intervention, 4-week post follow-up, 8-week follow up, and 12 week follow up
Measured by the eHealth Literacy scale (eHEAL), an 8-item self-reported efficacy scale scored on a 5-point Likert scale
baseline, 8-week post intervention, 4-week post follow-up, 8-week follow up, and 12 week follow up

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Digital Health Literacy
Time Frame: baseline, 8-week post intervention, 4-week post follow-up, 8-week follow up, and 12 week follow up
Measured by Digital Health Literacy Instrument
baseline, 8-week post intervention, 4-week post follow-up, 8-week follow up, and 12 week follow up
Vaccine literacy
Time Frame: baseline, 8-week post intervention, 4-week post follow-up, 8-week follow up, and 12 week follow up
knowledge about and intention to receive the COVID-19 vaccine
baseline, 8-week post intervention, 4-week post follow-up, 8-week follow up, and 12 week follow up
Knowledge, attitudes, and practices towards COVID-19
Time Frame: baseline, 8-week post intervention, 4-week post follow-up, 8-week follow up, and 12 week follow up
Assess knowledge, attitudes, and practices towards COVID-19
baseline, 8-week post intervention, 4-week post follow-up, 8-week follow up, and 12 week follow up

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Estimated)

September 1, 2023

Primary Completion (Estimated)

December 31, 2024

Study Completion (Estimated)

December 31, 2024

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

August 21, 2023

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

August 21, 2023

First Posted (Actual)

August 22, 2023

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

August 22, 2023

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

August 21, 2023

Last Verified

August 1, 2023

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • HSEARS20210902004

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

IPD Plan Description

Data can be obtained from principal investigator.

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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