As I sat in the student health center receiving my COVID-19 booster dose, I couldn’t help but reminisce on how far we have traveled since the days of the pandemic. If anything, the pandemic and the social isolation that accompanied it opened our eyes to many things that we had not been paying attention to earlier. Apart from pushing governments to ramp up their efforts to improve and safeguard public health, the pandemic also shed light on the impact of health information on digital media. On one hand, we realized how misinformation could spread faster than the virus itself, while on the other hand, the COVID-19 crisis underscored the importance of ‘digital health literacy’ as a major asset to drive public health initiatives.

Now, digital health literacy is by no means a new concept. Its origins date back to 2006 when it was called ‘eHealth Literacy’. More recently, the World Health Organization (WHO) defined digital health literacy as the “ability to search, find, understand, and evaluate health information from electronic resources and to use the knowledge gained to solve health-related problems.” The term is more significant in this era of social media and the internet, where a big chunk of our time is spent in the digital world. Be it choosing the appropriate diet for maximizing our gains in the gym or identifying the risks posed by a certain medical product, we rely on the internet for health-related information. So, it comes as no surprise when a study highlighted digital health literacy as one of the “super social determinants of health”. In fact, many initiatives outlined in the WHO’s official Global strategy on digital health 2020-2025 focused on improving it at a global level.

But, enhancing digital health literacy is easier said than done! There are a few barriers to consider that, if left unattended, could serve as major speed bumps in our journey to improve public health. One important factor to be mindful of is misinformation, which is abundant on the internet and has the capability to distort public perception of credible information and reduce trust in health authorities. At times, picking out scientifically accurate health information on the internet can seem like a needle-in-a-haystack scenario. Additionally, researchers found that other sociodemographic factors, such as age, education, income, and social support, influenced digital health literacy, with lower education and lower socioeconomic status strongly linked to poorer literacy. For a person with an immigrant or minority status and limited access to digital tools, these ‘digital gaps’ can widen into a chasm. Now, limitations in accessibility and lower education, along with cultural biases, might render some vulnerable populations more susceptible to misinformation. Thus, some of these factors feed off each other and need a multi-pronged approach to address them!

To counteract the sociodemographic influences, the researchers from the above-mentioned study recommend targeting digital health interventions towards such vulnerable groups, while considering their needs in mind. Policy-level steps aimed at addressing these barriers at the root can also have a positive impact on digital health literacy. As for combating misinformation, an interdisciplinary effort is required on a global level to ensure equitable access to health information that is reliable and accurate. Academic research can be a huge asset to countering misinformation when it is published in a way that is accessible to the public. Health practitioners also play a crucial role in ensuring that health information is communicated to the public in a clear and accurate fashion.

Thus, in recent decades, health literacy has moved away from understanding a clinical pamphlet and expanded into the vast digital territory of the internet. If anything, it has more sway over public health than ever before and can potentially be the wildcard in mitigating COVID-esque crises in the future. But it is possible only if we efficiently navigate the maze of barriers described above. 

In essence, the future of public health doesn’t depend on innovation, novel therapies, and health equity alone. It also heavily depends on the mindfulness and wisdom with which we seek and interpret health information in the digital world.