Brief educational animations to improve digital health literacy

 

Can brief, co-designed interventions improve digital health literacy skills?

And if so, which formats are most effective?

This project is investigating these questions in 3 stages.

Stage 1: Co-design intervention (completed)

In this stage we:

  • Co-designed a series of brief educational interventions teaching digital health literacy skills with 9 consumers from the Co-SHeLL Community Panel

  • Intervention formats included:

    • A 2 min animation

    • A 2 min TikTok-style video by professional science communicator (Dr Jessica Stokes-Parish)

    • A short text written following health literacy best-practice guidelines

Details from this stage can be found in the following journal article:

Vassilenko, D., Taba, M., Marcello, L., Haynes, T., Smith, J., Stokes-Parish, J., Hudson, C., McCaffery, K. (2025). The effects of a short video intervention on digital health literacy skills: Protocol for an online randomised controlled trial. Health Literacy and Communication Open, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/28355245.2025.2489723

Stage 2: Test interventions in RCT (completed)

In this stage, we:

  • Conducted an online RCT with over 2,000 Australians aged 18-39 years to test if the intervention improved their digital health literacy skills as well as other secondary measures

  • The participants were randomised to either 1) animation 2) TikTok 3) written text version or 4) control

  • We found:

    • Participants in all intervention groups had improved digital health literacy skills compared to control, however they were not significantly different from each other

    • Participants in written text group outperformed the TikTok participants on determining the credibility of the information sources and intention to apply the education

    • However TikTok format showed stronger relative effects amongst men

  • The findings indicates that brief health-literacy optimised interventions, regardless of format can improve digital health literacy skills.

Details from this stage can be found in the following journal article:

McCaffery K, Hudson C, Vassilenko D, Smith J, Marcello L, Haynes T, Stokes-Parish J, Ingwersen K, Muscat D, Taba M. The Effects of a Short Video Intervention on Digital Health Literacy Skills: An Online Randomized Controlled Trial. Journal of General Internal Medicine. 2026. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-026-10616-y

Stage 3: Implementing intervention online (currently underway)

In this stage we intend to:

  • Partner with University of Sydney to update and implement the intervention on their official social media channels and measure real-world reach and engagement.

More details to come.

Led by: Prof. Kirsten McCaffery

Collaborators: Dr Melody Taba, Dr Danielle Muscat, Dr Jenna Smith, Claire Hudson, Diana Vassilenko, Lucia Marcello, Tara Haynes, Kirsten Ingwersen and Dr Jessica Stokes-Parish (Bond University)