Article type
Abstract
" Background: Health literacy refers to the ability of individuals to obtain and understand basic health information and services, and use these information and services to make correct decisions in order to maintain and promote their own health. Studies have shown that public health education interventions such as health popularization have become an effective way to improve public health literacy, and combining the current diversified new media information can produce better results.
Objectives: This study systemically identifies, describes and evaluates the evidence from research on the impact of health popularization and other public health educational interventions on public health literacy, using the evidence mapping method.
Methods: We searched databases including China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang, VIP, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, and Cochrane Library up to January 2024 to obtain related original research data. The included studies were assessed for quality using the ROB.2 and NOS scales, and an evidence map was used to comprehensively depict the study population, intervention methods, number of studies, and conclusion categories.
Results: After screening, a total of 121 studies were included. The main interventions given to the experimental group were knowledge propaganda and health literacy interventions, with health education accounting for a large proportion, while the interventions for the control group were diverse. The results showed that health popularization, health education, and educational promotional interventions can improve public health literacy levels, thereby promoting individuals to adopt healthy lifestyles and ensuring improvements in quality of life. However, according to our assessment, current research has issues in methodology, such as the lack of rigour in research design and incomplete explanation of the impact of heterogeneity and bias risk.
Conclusions: Although the evidence map shows that all included studies believe health popularization and other public health educational interventions might be beneficial, the overall quality of evidence remains low, and the main influencing factor is methodological problems. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct higher quality, more standardized research in the future to provide stronger evidence-based support and verify the effects of health popularization and other public health educational interventions."
Objectives: This study systemically identifies, describes and evaluates the evidence from research on the impact of health popularization and other public health educational interventions on public health literacy, using the evidence mapping method.
Methods: We searched databases including China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang, VIP, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, and Cochrane Library up to January 2024 to obtain related original research data. The included studies were assessed for quality using the ROB.2 and NOS scales, and an evidence map was used to comprehensively depict the study population, intervention methods, number of studies, and conclusion categories.
Results: After screening, a total of 121 studies were included. The main interventions given to the experimental group were knowledge propaganda and health literacy interventions, with health education accounting for a large proportion, while the interventions for the control group were diverse. The results showed that health popularization, health education, and educational promotional interventions can improve public health literacy levels, thereby promoting individuals to adopt healthy lifestyles and ensuring improvements in quality of life. However, according to our assessment, current research has issues in methodology, such as the lack of rigour in research design and incomplete explanation of the impact of heterogeneity and bias risk.
Conclusions: Although the evidence map shows that all included studies believe health popularization and other public health educational interventions might be beneficial, the overall quality of evidence remains low, and the main influencing factor is methodological problems. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct higher quality, more standardized research in the future to provide stronger evidence-based support and verify the effects of health popularization and other public health educational interventions."