Health literacy and parenting infants
Understanding parents’ experiences
Health literacy stands as a cornerstone for individual and communal well-being, encompassing the capacity to access, comprehend, and apply health information effectively. It serves as a bridge to health equity, mediating between socio-economic factors and health outcomes.
What is health literacy?
Defined by Sørensen et al as “people’s knowledge, motivation and competences to access, understand, appraise, and apply health information in order to make judgments and take decisions in everyday life concerning healthcare”, health literacy influences decisions in healthcare, disease prevention, and health promotion, and directly impacts quality of life.
Why is parental health literacy important?
Parental health literacy is paramount. Low parental health literacy correlates with inadequate health knowledge and less effective parenting practices, affecting children's well-being. Daily challenges, from health education to healthcare decisions, underscore the significance of parental health literacy.
Studies highlight the complexity of health literacy in parenting, extending beyond basic literacy to critical analysis and active information application. There is a notable social gradient in health literacy, with familial and social networks playing pivotal roles in its development.
The need to understand parental health literacy experiences
Healthcare providers often lack comprehensive understanding of the nuances of parental health literacy, particularly in paediatric settings. Bridging this gap is crucial for effective communication and tailored support for parents. While systematic reviews exist on the relationship between parental health literacy and children's health outcomes, a gap remains in understanding specific health literacy experiences in parenting.
A forthcoming systematic review seeks to address this gap, aiming to synthesise qualitative evidence on parental health literacy experiences in daily infant care.
The protocol for the systematic review is available in the January 2024 issue of JBI Evidence Synthesis:
Sakai, Ayano; Ishimaru, Mina; Iwata, Hiroko; Iwase, Seiko; Suzuki, Satoko
JBI Evidence Synthesis 22(1):p 90-96, January 2024. | DOI: 10.11124/JBIES-23-00017