Open AccessThe impact of the covid-19 pandemic on anxiety, health literacy, and eHealth literacy in 2020 related to healthcare behavior in Thailand
Author(s) -
Passakorn Suanrueang,
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MeinWoei Suen,
Hao Lin,
TzeKiong Er,
Maria Michaela Quilang Jamora,
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AUTHOR_ID,
AUTHOR_ID,
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Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
journal of public health and development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2673-0774
DOI - 10.55131/jphd/2022/200115
Subject(s) - health literacy , ehealth , health care , snowball sampling , literacy , pandemic , psychology , social distance , medicine , disease , political science , covid-19 , infectious disease (medical specialty) , pedagogy , pathology , law
Individual’s decision to cooperate with disease prevention varies based on their respective health beliefs and common factors that motivate actions. Previous research has found that pandemic anxiety, high health literacy, and eHealth literacy influenced healthcare behavior. Understanding how the pandemic affects people on modifying preventive health behavior is promising. Accordingly, this cross-sectional study focusing on health behavior utilized Structural Equation Modeling to characterize causative factors of anxiety, health literacy, eHealth literature, and protection in the new normal of COVID-19 pandemic in Thailand. Online surveys used a snowball sampling method through social media to recruit participants aged over 20 years in 8 provinces in Thailand. iGeneration and millennials were the top two, making up 75.0% of the 700-respondents in total. Independent variables: Health Literacy (p = .030); eHealth Literacy (p < .001); and anxiety (p = .040) significantly influenced the new normal. The new normal practices: hand hygiene, wearing hygienic masks and social distancing, maintaining good health, and preventing virus exposure by making digital payments could be indicated by 34% of Thai people by all those independent variables. This means that those who are more concerned and literate about health literacy and eHealth literacy, will make better health decisions and practice more preventive health care. Individuals may use health knowledge to make healthy decisions to protect themselves from the current pandemic. They can also use what they have learned to defend themselves from other emerging infectious illnesses in the future. Therefore, official institutions should provide helpful and timely health information that is easily accessible. Public health interventions should prioritize the availability of health information in the electronic form on various social media platforms to educate people to protect themselves from the spread of disease. The information should be comprehensible and practical for all socioeconomic groups.