Are health websites credible enough for elderly self-education in the most prevalent elderly diseases?

BACKGROUND: The Elderly and their caregivers need credible health information to manage elderly chronic diseases and help them to be involved in health decision making. In this regard, health websites are considered as a potential source of information for elderlies as well as their caregivers. Nevertheless, the credibility of these websites has not been identified yet. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate the credibility of the health websites on the most prevalent chronic diseases of the elderly. METHODS: The terms "Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease", "Alzheimer's", "Ischemic heart disease", and "Stroke" were searched using the three popular search engines. A total of 216 unique websites were eligible for evaluation. The study was carried out using the HONcode of conduct. The chi-square test was carried out to determine the difference between conforming and nonconforming websites with HONcode principles and website categories. RESULTS: The findings showed that half of the evaluated websites had fully considered the HONcode principles. Furthermore, there was a significant difference between websites category and compliance with HONcode principles (p value < .05). CONCLUSION: Regarding the poor credibility of most prevalent elderly diseases' websites, the potential online health information users should be aware of the low credibility of such websites, which may seriously threaten their health. Furthermore, educating the elderly and their caregivers to evaluate the credibility of websites by the use of popular tools such as HONcode of conducts before utilizing their information seems to be necessary.

Assessing the eHealth literacy skills of family caregivers of medically ill elderly.

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of current research is to assess the eHealth literacy level in the family caregivers of the elderly with hypertension and type-II diabetes. METHODS: A total of 160 caregivers completed the eHEALS questionnaire. The effect of participants' gender, education, and age on eHealth literacy was evaluated. For evaluation of the correlation between the accession of health information importance and the internet usefulness for decision-making, Spearman's correlation coefficient was applied. RESULTS: The participants eHealth literacy mean score was 26.163(SD=8.83). The age of participants had a meaningful impact on the level of eHealth literacy (t=6.074; P<0.001). Furthermore, among variant education levels in terms of eHealth literacy score significant differences existed (F=5.222; P=0.001). DISCUSSION: The family caregivers have a poor level of eHealth literacy. eHealth information is more important for family caregivers with a higher eHealth literacy, which may be due to their higher skills in obtaining health and medical information from the internet. Caregivers' age should be considered once recommending them for the internet using to obtain health information, as the age was an affecting factor. CONCLUSION: Health centers and authorities in charge of the elderly health are recommended to train caregivers with proper skills to use online health information, such that the elderly enjoy the benefits, including improved care conditions and savings in terms of treatment costs and time.