Health Kiosk: development and implementation of a low treshold community health literacy hub.

Caroline Masquillier, Hilde Bastiaens, Naomi Aerts, Kathleen Van Royen

Keywords: Health Kiosk, health literacy, socioeconomically vulnerable groups, outreach working

Background:

Being health literate is important to get sufficient health information, to navigate the health system, to access appropriate care and to be able to self-manage health. As such it is a key determinant of health. There is a need for innovative measures to improve health literacy among people living in socioeconomically vulnerable circumstances. In response to this need, a low treshold community health literacy hub was developed and implemented in a vulnerable neighbourhood in the city of Antwerp, within a broader project on the prevention of cardiovascular diseases (H2020 SPICES project).

Research questions:

The objective of this contribution is to describe the Health Kiosk guided by the principles underpinning the Integrated Community Care (ICC) framework—designed by the Transnational Forum on Integrated Community Care (i.e., TransForm).

Method:

A qualitative descriptive approach using in-depth interviews with implementers (founder, coordinator, intern) was taken. Interviews were audiotaped, transcribed and thematic analysis was done guided by the ICC framework. The research team was closely involved in all the steps of the development of the Health Kiosk, so was able to document the process from a participatory point of view. These observations and documents, such as meeting notes were used as addional data.

Results:

Several core ingredients of the Health Kiosk are important to stimulate health literacy among socioeconomically vulnerable groups, namely: (1) working in a community-based, outreaching way; (2) providing accessible health information and support to act on that knowledge; and (3) working in a flexible and independent way to adapt to local needs. As such, the Health Kiosk forms a community health literacy hub with low-threshold access for people living in socioeconomically vulnerable circumstances.

Conclusions:

To be able to focus on the core activity of the Health Kiosk—i.e., stimulating healthy living and health literacy—community building and considering the spatial environment of the neighborhood formed a fundamental basis.

Points for discussion:

Monitoring and evaluationg grassroots innovations is challenging. We would welcome experiences of other researchers on evaluation these kinds of innitiatives.

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