Media Health Literacy, e-mHealth literacy and health behaviour across the lifespan – current progress and future challenges

Health literacy (HL) is crucial to health as it is associated with a variety of health behaviours and a predictor of many health outcomes (Berkman et al, 2010; Paasche-Orlow and Wolf, 2010; Levin-Zamir et al, 2016). HL is not evenly distributed within the population or across the lifespan. Groups at risk for low HL include people with limited financial resources, members of minority ethnic groups – especially those with a mother tongue other than the local language – people with low educational attainment and older people (Nielsen-Bohlman et al, 2004; Vernon et al, 2007; ABS, 2008; Ng et al, 2014; Sørensen et al, 2015).In a highly media-saturated and digitalised world, health information is increasingly available and accessed via diverse media. The skills to navigate this environment are strongly linked to HL, and as such are not equally distributed within the population. This chapter presents two constructs – media health literacy (MHL) and eHealth literacy (eHL) – and offers an overview of their associations with health behaviour both across different age groups and among special populations. Interventions to improve MHL and eHL are discussed, and conclusions for further research on health literacy and health behaviour in the digital era drawn