The Effectiveness of Digital Health Literacy Enhancing Program on Pre-Eclampsia Preventive Behavior
Keywords:
Health literacy, Digital health literacy, Health literacy program, Pre-eclampsia prevention, Pregnant womenAbstract
Preeclampsia is a pregnancy complication that affects both the pregnant woman and her baby. This experimental study aims to investigate the effectiveness of program for promoting digital health literacy (DHL) on preeclampsia preventive behavior among pregnant women who received prenatal care services at a hospital in Surat Thani Province in 2022, a total of 60 participants were included, divided into an experimental group of 30 and a control group of 30 by randomized assignment. The inclusion criteria were normal pregnant women who had not been diagnosed by a physician with preeclampsia, pregnancy more than 16 weeks and voluntary participants. The experimental group participated in a digital health literacy promotion program, consisting of 8 activities: 1) Goal setting and planning, 2) Pre-eclampsia and digital information retrieval, 3) Information search skills, 4) Reading and understanding skills, 5) Understanding hidden dangers on the internet, 6) Manage and exchange information, 7) Create a self-care plan and 8) Review and change behavior, while the control group received only routine prenatal care. Data were collected in three periods: pretest, posttest and one-month follow-up using an 8-item digital health literacy scale and a 51-item preeclampsia prevention behavior scale, with reliability coefficients of .83 and .88, respectively. The data was analyzed by MANOVA. The research findings were as follows: 1) after the end of the program and a one-month follow-up, the experimental group had significantly higher mean digital health literacy and preeclampsia prevention behaviors than the control group (F = 116.183, p = .000), and 2) after the end of the program and a one-month follow-up, the experimental group had significantly higher mean digital health literacy and preeclampsia prevention behaviors than before the experiment (F = 153.100, p < .000). This developed program can be used as a guideline for medical and public health personnel to prevent preeclampsia in pregnant women.
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