Medical experts stress the importance of having a plan for the eventuality of positive results. Are you ready to self-isolate? Are you able to provide personal protection for your family members? What should you tell about your diagnosis? In the initial stages of the pandemic, 96% of educated, healthy adults surveyed by University of Houston researchers didn't have a complete plan. 62% did not have any plan.This suggests that even high functioning individuals found it difficult to understand and use the complicated information about COVID. They were not prepared and uneasy about how to proceed," Steven Woods, UH psychology professor and co-author of the study published by the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology.On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 as a pandemic. Michelle A. Babicz (UH clinical psychology doctoral student) and Woods, the first author, spoke with 217 participants over the phone between April 23rd and May 21st 2020. Participants completed standard measures of neurocognition and intelligence as well as questions about their COVID-19 information seeking skills and knowledge."The surprising result confirms the importance of basic health literacy skills because people's ability understand numbers and medical terms was related to how well they searched for credible COVID-19 info online, how much they learned, and how they used that information in keeping themselves and others safe," said Woods, who heads the Cognitive Neuropsychology of Daily Life Laboratory at the UH College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.Researchers note that even if healthy people had difficulty absorbing COVID-related information in the past, this may have an impact on those with low education opportunities, neurocognitive disorders or individuals with impaired memory and/or persons with low health literacy.Babicz stated that people with lower neurocognitive abilities may be more at risk of acquiring and using misinformation regarding COVID-19. This could have downstream consequences for personal and public health.Researchers offer a variety of techniques that can help individuals improve their ability learn and remember information about health. These include spacing which refers to the process of processing new information over time, rather than trying to cram it all in one go. They also recommend flash cards for knowledge recall and elaboration, which is the process of creating a story from what you have learned.Babicz stated that the findings could also be used to target information campaigns in response to new public health crises. We suggest that these campaigns make use of language and constructs that are easily understood by people with low health literacy, such as through community-based participatory research.###Anastasia Matchanova, Luis D. Medina, and Rheeda Walker were also collaborators in this study. They are all part of the UH Department of Psychology. Kenneth Podell is Houston Methodist Hospital.
