JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Parental health literacy is associated with child health outcomes. Parents are increasingly using the internet to obtain health information. In response, health care providers are developing digital interventions to communicate information to assist parents to manage of their child’s health conditions. Despite the emergence of interventions to improve parental health literacy, to date no systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of interventions has been undertaken.

Objective:

The objective of this review was to examine the effect of digital health interventions on health literacy among parents of children 0-12 years with short or long-term health conditions. This includes the evaluation of parent’s engagement (utilisation and satisfaction) with digital health interventions, the effect of these interventions on parent’s health literacy (knowledge and health seeking behaviour) and the subsequent impact on child health outcomes.

Methods:

This systematic literature review was registered a priori on PROSPERO and developed according to Joanna Briggs Institute for systematic reviews. The databases CINAHL, MEDLINE and PSYCHINFO were searched for relevant literature published between January 2010 and April 2021. This review considered studies with parents or primary care givers of children aged 0-12 years with short or long-term health conditions. Studies were included if they were written in English and reported on outcomes of digital health interventions to improve parental health literacy. Two of the authors independently assessed search results and performed critical appraisal of the studies.

Results:

Following the review of 1351 abstracts, 31 studies were selected for full text review. Six studies met the inclusion criteria and one study was excluded following critical appraisal. The five remaining studies were quantitative in design and included digital health interventions using web-based portals to improve parental health literacy. Due to heterogeneity in outcomes reported meta-analysis was not possible and findings were presented in narrative form. Satisfaction was measured in three studies, all reporting high satisfaction with the digital intervention. All five studies found improvement in parents’ health literacy post intervention either as increased knowledge or changes in health seeking behaviour. One study included child health outcomes and reported significant improvements due to increased parental health literacy.

Conclusions:

In response to a pandemic such as COVID-19, there is an increased need for evidence based digital health interventions for families of children living with health conditions. This review has shown the potential for digital health interventions to improve health literacy and health seeking behaviour among parents of young children with short or long-term health conditions. However, few digital health interventions have been developed and evaluated for this population. Future studies should using robust research designs are needed and should include the potential benefits of increased parent health literacy for the child.