url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLz2RhmiL80

Allan, Brent; Malhotra, Suzy; and Muchamore, Ian. (2014, October). Profiling the health literacy needs of Australian gay men living with HIV to improve health outcomes and reduce inequalities. Presented at the Gay Men's Health Summit, Vancouver, Canada. Health literacy can be defined as a person's ability to understand, access and use health information and health services. Increasingly this multi-dimensional concept is being used across organisations and health systems to respond to the needs of the communities they serve. Living Positive Victoria, with support from Deakin University, has adapted and used the Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ), a new survey measure of health literacy which captures client?s experience, views and capabilities across nine dimensions. The HLQ is already in use across several Australian community and health care organisations and in international contexts where an Optimising Health Literacy (Ophelia) approach framework is also being trialed to develop and test system improvements. The HLQ has been adapted to be delivered online and 13 specific PLHIV relevant items added to allow comparisons across different groups (e.g. recent vs long term diagnosed, ARV status). To date, 129 PLHIV have completed the HLQ and most are gay men or MSM (86%). The mean age of participants is 48 years old. The sample so far is highly educated (53% report having a tertiary degree or diploma) and much more likely to report taking ARVs (96% compared to population estimate 60%). Attempts to better capture the diversity and health literacy needs of harder to reach groups will be discussed. A preliminary analysis of those gay men living with HIV in Victoria and surveyed indicates that whilst this group score highly across several domains they appear to score lower in the social support domain. The final survey findings will be considered in the development and assessment of new interventions and a systematic response to the development of community-based health literacy responses for gay men living with HIV.

null

null