Sains Malaysiana 49(5)(2020): 1021-1036

http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/jsm-2020-4905-07

Health Literacy Research in Malaysia: A Scoping Review

(Penyelidikan Literasi Kesihatan di Malaysia: Suatu Ulasan Penskopan)

ADINA ABDULLAH¹, LIEW SU MAY¹*, HANI SYAHIDA SALIM², NG CHIRK JENN¹ & KARUTHAN CHINNA³

¹Department of Primary Care Medicine, University Malaya Primary Care Research Group (UMPCRG), Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Federal Territory, Malaysia

²Department of Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health Science, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

³School of Medicine, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, Taylor’s University, Kuala Lumpur, Federal Territory, Malaysia

Received: 5 April 2019/Accepted: 15 January 2020

ABSTRACT

Research on health literacy is expanding worldwide. Health literacy has been recognised as a critical determinant of health at the 2016 Shanghai Declaration. Little is known about health literacy research in Malaysia. This scoping review aims to identify and summarise published studies on health literacy in Malaysia. PubMed, Scopus and the Malaysian Medical Repository (MyMedR) databases were searched for published work by Malaysian researchers. Searches were conducted up to November 2019. The search terms used are related to ‘health literacy’ and ‘Malaysia’. Studies included were those involving Malaysian citizens and reporting on various aspects of health literacy. Studies were reviewed by two independent reviewers to determine their eligibility. Data extraction for the year of publication, name of authors, geographical location, research focus, and summary of findings from the full-text articles was carried out independently and any disagreement was resolved by consensus. A total of 29 articles were included with the earliest article published in 1985. Fifteen of the articles are on general health literacy, four on medication literacy, five on mental health literacy, three on media and e-health literacy and four on oral health literacy. Four articles are qualitative studies and the rest are quantitative studies. A few of the studies used validated health literacy tools such as Newest Vital Signs and HLS-EU-Q47. Therefore, we can conclude that there are only a limited number of articles published in the field of health literacy in Malaysia. Future work using validated international tools to allow comparison of the findings should be considered.

Keywords: Health literacy; Malaysia; medication literacy; mental health literacy

ABSTRAK

Penyelidikan literasi kesihatan semakin mendapat perhatian di seluruh dunia. Literasi kesihatan telah diiktiraf sebagai penentu kesihatan yang kritikal pada Deklarasi Shanghai 2016. Amat sedikit yang diketahui tentang penyelidikan literasi kesihatan di Malaysia. Kajian ini bertujuan untuk mengenal pasti dan meringkaskan terbitan kajian tentang literasi kesihatan di Malaysia. Pangkalan data PubMed, Scopus danMalaysian Medical Repository (MyMedR) digunakan sebagai sumber untuk kajian yang diterbitkan oleh penyelidik Malaysia. Carian telah dijalankan sehingga November 2019. Terma carian yang digunakan berkaitan adalah ‘literasi kesihatan’ dan ‘Malaysia’. Kajian yang terlibat adalah dalam kalangan rakyat Malaysia tentang pelbagai aspek literasi kesihatan. Kajian dikaji semula oleh dua pengulas bebas untuk menentukan kelayakan mereka. Pengekstrakan data melibatkan tahun penerbitan, nama pengarang, lokasi geografi, fokus penyelidikan dan ringkasan penemuan daripada artikel teks penuh dijalankan secara bebas dan sebarang perselisihan diselesaikan melalui persetujuan. Sebanyak 29 artikel disertakan dengan artikel terawal yang diterbitkan pada tahun 1985. Lima belas artikel itu adalah tentang literasi kesihatan umum dengan empat literasi perubatan, lima literasi kesihatan mental, tiga di media dan literasi e-kesihatan dan empat literasi kesihatan mulut. Empat artikel adalah kajian kualitatif dan selebihnya adalah kajian kuantitatif. Beberapa kajian menggunakan alat literasi kesihatan yang disahkan seperti Newest Vital Signs dan HLS-EU-Q47. Oleh itu, secara kesimpulan, terdapat hanya sedikit artikel yang diterbitkan dalam bidang literasi kesihatan di Malaysia. Pada masa hadapan penggunaan alat antarabangsa yang disahkan untuk membolehkan perbandingan penemuan harus dipertimbangkan.

Kata kunci: Celik kesihatan mental; literasi kesihatan; literasi perubatan; Malaysia

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*Corresponding author; email: su_mayliew@um.edu.my