Patient and public involvement in health literacy interventions: A mapping review

Abstract

Background: Health literacy is the ability to understand, access and use health care and is a critical mediating factor that affects the health of older adults. Patient and public involvement in health and social care research, policy and design of care delivery is one mechanism that can promote production of better health literacy. This mapping review looks for and describes practices, concepts and methods that have been reported involving patients and public in the development and design of health literacy interventions for older people. Methods: Studies for the present review were selected from an inventory of health behaviour studies published between 2003 and 2013. The inventory was created by systematic searches on bibliographic databases (Medline, CINAHL, Scopus, Google) for health literacy interventions involving older people (50+ years) and resulted in screening of 5561 articles, of which 1097 met study inclusion criteria. For the research described in this article 96 of the 1097 studies specifically focused on health literacy and were independently screened by two reviewers to assess involvement of stakeholders other than investigators and participants. Results: Twenty studies included patient and/or public involvement in at least one research domain: design, management or evaluation. Involvement included volunteers, older people, patients, and/or community representatives. Conclusions: Patient and public involvement were rarely reported in studies on health literacy interventions for older people. Future intervention development needs high quality PPI, which is well reported to develop the evidence base and inform practice.