Health Literacy Survey

Now that we have been settling in and the survey is created, I can tell you more about the work I am doing. Essentially, AHLA is the head division of health literacy in Asia and works in conjunction with the European Union. They have a close relationship and hold many meetings together. Our goal is to work with the sister project of HLS-EU which conducted in 2011 in 8 different countries. It was developed to measure health literacy in the European Health Literacy Survey. This was to establish the issue of health literacy in the area and its objectives were to establish a network and adopt a model instrument to measure health literacy in Europe. It was important for it to make a comparative assessment of health literacy in European countries as well as providing the indicators to monitor. Our goal is the same- but for Asia. Our mission is to provide a validated measure tool for health literacy in countries of interest in Asia and establish a regional network to promote health literacy.

It was launched in the spring of 2013 and Duong (the PhD student) is leading the research project with Dr. Peter Chang. Specifically for the interns (me, P and J) are to conduct 500 surveys in different departments in Taipei Medical Hospital- approximately 100 per department. We are conducting the test trial essentially.

The original HLS-EU Questionnaire is comprised of 86 questions. The original HLS-Asia-Q was 104 questions to meet the demographic needs of Asians. After every session of collecting data, we are to de brief on what questions patients struggled with, and why it occurred that way. It is important to tailor the questionnaire to be standardized but also be in a comprehensive language that the target population will answer.

The first time that we were sent out to data collect, I found that we really have to take initiative on our own. Dr. Peter Chang dropped us off at an office and we didn’t know what was happening. It was just P and I because J was on vacation still with his family. We both were to practice our mandarin with the doctor and so we did. Keep in mind- our Mandarin is sounds westernized so we had pinying (which is a type of pronunciation method) above the characters. Every time we would pronounce a word, they thought we were saying something different. It ended up that we just chatted with the doctor about our life and then he kept saying stuff about sex and we were very confused. We realized at the end he was a prostate doctor and he was talking about his line of work. We ran back to the office and we were just so embarrassed and our coworkers had a great time laughing with us about our adventure.

They dropped us off at another unit known as Traditional Chinese Medicine. Our professor helped us through the first person but then quickly just went off to do his duties as he is a family doctor in the hospital. I learned that there are a lot of traditional customs we need to be careful of. We have to greet the head doctor at the Traditional Chinese Medicine unit and then we would go off to talk to the patients waiting. Most individuals who are at this unit are traditional and older adults which are perfect for the study. However; as me and P do not look like the typical Taiwanese girl, we are often mistaken for Malaysia, Singapore, etc. These individuals would rather talk to someone from Taiwan and we had to overcome these challenges. We used our cuteness as girls and explained we were students from America and Canada that were Taiwanese descent here to learn. After we said that, they were excited to help us out.

It’s tough- going up to the patients who speak fluently in Mandarin and Taiwanese. At least in other places, they speak English so it’s been rather okay to work. It’s definitely going to be difficult as our internship is halfway through but we know we can overcome these barriers!