About the Project:
A concerning rise in AMR globally threatens the very core of modern medicine, ultimately affecting health security, poverty levels, economic growth, food security and the achievement of all the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). AMR is a “wicked problem” involving different perspectives medical, technological and social, which imply there is not one best approach. Research shows that ‘lifestyle choices’ impact AMR, and one of most effective actions to reduce, and control involve changes in social practices, improving hygiene, and cultivating more responsible antibiotic prescription and consumption. Enabling these changes fundamentally requires building awareness, access and understanding of health information from trusted sources and creating health literacy and lifestyle changes.
DigiAMRLit works with the assumption that co-production of health literacy can help expand people’s agency to better navigate these structural inequities to mitigate the AMR risks and enhance health equity as the poor and disadvantaged are most badly affected by AMR. Health literacy entails people’s knowledge, motivation, and competence to access, understand, appraise, and apply health information to make judgments on their health-seeking behavior to improve quality of life.
Project empirically based: Himachal Pradesh, India
Project Phases:
- Phase I– Health Literacy Need assessment (2022)
- - This phase focuses on doing baseline/situation assessment of health information seeking practices and health-seeking behaviour practices of the communities and healthcare providers (doctors, nurses, health workers, and community health workers)
- Phase II – Intervention phase - Appraising, co-producing, disseminating (2023)
- - This phase focuses on the design and development of digital health literacy content. The methodology followed is participatory design and co-production of health literacy with communities and healthcare providers
- Phase II– Establishing evidence base on the efficacy of health literacy related interventions (2024)
- - This phase focuses on impact evaluation of digital literacy intervention
Who is this for:
Health and Informatics students, working in a group but writing individual theses. This project is particularly relevant for students who are interested in an action-research-based intervention approach, in an inter-disciplinary environment. Also, students who will like to use a participatory approach to co-produce/design digital health literacy.