Parental health literacy and prevention, diagnostics and treatment of childhood allergy (Epidemiology)

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Parental health literacy (HL) is thought to be crucial for managing the manifold demands relating to child health. However, there is still a knowledge gap regarding how HL evolves and possibly fluctuates over a longer period of time, as well as how it is influenced by changing personal and situational determinants. Despite the abundance of observational studies on risk factors and more recent interventional studies on childhood allergy prevention, none of these studies have taken into account the role of parental HL. A better understanding of how and when HL translates into favourable allergy related health behaviours and health outcomes could provide valuable insights for future research and the development of interventions. Further, families’ patient journeys from recognition of symptoms to diagnosis and treatment in childhood allergy can be complex and research is needed on where patient journeys become particularly complicated and on whether individual HL or HL-sensitive communication from the health professional (HP) can ease the way to timely diagnosis and treatment. The overall aim of this work package (WP-Epidemiology) is to better understand the role of HL in the field of childhood allergy and prevention. More specifically, the objectives are: 1) to analyse the development and determinants of parental HL, 2) to analyse allergy prevention behaviours, allergy-related health outcomes and the associations with parental HL, and 3) to map families’ patient journeys to allergy diagnosis and treatment. The project uses data from the KUNO-Kids health study. The work programme contains the following major tasks: In task 1, we will analyse the longitudinal development of mothers’ HL from child’s birth over 5 years using latent growth curve modelling. In task 2, we will analyse allergy prevention behaviours, allergy outcomes and the associations with HL. We will test the hypothesis that higher HL of mothers is associated with decreased chance for incident allergy in the child from the second year of life onwards. Task 3 comprises the conduct of a study among families whose child has an allergic disease. Patient journeys for the child’s allergy-related health care utilization will be recreated in user-centered maps which display the contacts with the health care system in chronological order. WP-Epidemiology will be helpful for the HELICAP research group, since it delivers up-to-date knowledge on HL, allergy prevention behaviours and allergy-related health outcomes among a large sample of families in Germany. This information will be used for educational purposes in WP-Health Professionals and WP-Planetary Health. WP-Epidemiology will also closely collaborate with WP-Doing Health and support the recruitment of HPs.