JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the proliferation and uptake of misinformation and disinformation revealed widespread misunderstanding of health and infectious diseases that hampered effective response to a global pandemic. Viewing this as a challenge of public health literacy—oriented to the interconnectedness of self and community health—we sought guidance from the literature to better define public health literacy in outbreak settings. We attempted to conduct a scoping literature review to identify relevant concepts and gaps in the literature on public health literacy in the context of infectious disease outbreaks. Although literature with this emphasis was sparse, we identified four papers with unique definitions of health and public health literacy that incorporated community themes. We then used these definitions to develop a new framework and definition of public health literacy in outbreaks. Public health literacy in outbreaks (PHLiO) encompasses an individual’s and a community’s ability to obtain, understand, evaluate, and respond to the complexity of rapidly changing public health and scientific information, with the goal of empowering individual and collective agency to make public health decisions that benefit the community and promote comprehensive societal responses. Elements of PHLiO appear to have been useful in successful responses to a range of public health challenges. The proposed PHLiO framework provides a foundation for developing educational materials, measurement tools, and research. The framework also outlines minimum competencies required to effectively avoid mis/disinformation, move from a self/individual-care model of disease prevention to a model of community care, and improve effectiveness at preventing disease during outbreaks.