Dr Margaret Merga - Students' Health Literacy and the Role of the School Library

JULIA SMITH - SLANZA NE REP FOR TE TAI TOKERAU

Have you ever heard of health literacy? I hadn’t until I had the opportunity to attend one of the marvellous Margaret Merga sessions on this topic at the Australian School Library Association national conference. Dr Merga delivered a fascinating presentation steeped in her research and knowledge. In this brief overview, I simply won’t do her the justice deserved, nevertheless, we all do need to be aware of health literacy and our role as school librarians in guiding our students through this literacy.

WHAT IS HEALTH LITERACY?

“Health literacy is the skills, knowledge, motivation, and capacity of a person to access, understand, appraise and apply information to make effective decisions about health and health care and take appropriate actions.” (Merga, 2023)

THE INTERSECTION BETWEEN HEALTH LITERACY AND OTHER LITERACIES

Obviously, health literacy is another literacy. We know our job entails helping students become critical consumers of information, enabling our young people to find valid, trusted information in books, websites, and social media. We teach them about misinformation (inaccurate information), disinformation (deliberately circulated false information), algorithms, and lateral reading. We may utilise the S.I.F.T. evaluation framework. As part of that teaching, we need to encompass health literacy examples.

THE EMERGING ROLES OF SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS AS A SOURCE OF HEALTH INFORMATION FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

Dr Merga is concerned about the quality of health information young people encounter on social networking platforms, and the qualifications, expertise and ethics of content creators disseminating this information.

She embarked on a case study of TikTok because of its popularity and the prevalence of health-related content on that platform. TikTok enjoys over a billion worldwide monthly users and a third of those are under fourteen years of age!

THE BENEFITS AND RISKS OF ACCESSING HEALTH INFORMATION FROM SOCIAL MEDIA CREATORS

Her research revealed that TikTok can be a valuable space for sharing vital public health messages and it is not uncommon for health professionals to debunk health information on this platform.

However, topics of controversy include body image, vaping and cannabis usage positively framed, disordered eating, and pharmaceuticals being promoted by non-medical people. Content creators can be highly persuasive and manipulative and are exploiting this platform for economic gains.

“Strong digital health literacy skills are a vital safeguard given the potential harm of false information around health issues can cause.”

(Merga, 2023)

THE UNIQUE ROLE THE SCHOOL LIBRARY AND ITS STAFF CAN PLAY IN HELPING STUDENTS NAVIGATE ONLINE HEALTH INFORMATION

For our young people to make informed decisions about their health, they need health literacy skills to locate, evaluate, and comprehend health information. Research shows that health outcomes are positively influenced by the level of health literacy. School librarians need to be aware of health literacy and add it to our skill set.

We need to promote both our fiction and non-fiction for students to explore health issues, ensuring that the sources are age-appropriate, current and credible. Dr Merga suggested we may need to weed extensively, as well as build and maintain our physical books on health information, that books are such a critical source of trusted information for our students.

We also need to ensure our young people have the digital health literacy skills to evaluate the information they find, or that is so often pushed at them:

• is the creator both impartial and expert?

• is the information reliable?

• is the information supported by reputable websites?

Dr Merga said we need to model those skills for our students - find videos, and together with our students, evaluate the credibility of the information.

For more information, see Dr Margaret Merga’s book, School Libraries Supporting Literacy and Wellbeing, 2022. She can be found on Twitter @MKMERGA

Julia Smith, SLANZA NE rep for Te Tai Tokerau