Digital Health Literacy and Social Determinants of Health Affecting Telehealth Use by Athletic Trainers

Abstract

Context: While increasing telehealth use throughout sports medicine has improved patients’ access to health care, some communities may not have the same opportunities to connect with a provider. Barriers to telehealth implementation can be influenced by internal (eg, provider’s digital health literacy and resources) and external (eg, community’s social determinants of health or “SDOH”) factors. This study aimed to assess the impact of internal and external factors on telehealth use by athletic trainers (ATs). Design: Cross-sectional survey. Methods: In total, 767 ATs participated in the study. Participants (age = 39 [13] y) completed a survey containing the electronic health literacy scale and digital health literacy instrument, reported professional use of telehealth as a provider (yes/no), provided resources at their clinical site, and provided the zip code for the community they served. After data collection, the researchers extracted SDOH information using the zip code data from 2 US databases, including population density, median household income, poverty index, education level, and technology access. Chi-square or independent samples t tests were conducted to compare telehealth use by each SDOH factor. Results: In total, 62.3% (n = 478/767) of ATs reported using telehealth, and 81.6% of ATs (n = 626) had a dedicated facility to offer health care services. We identified a significant difference in digital health literacy scores between users and nonusers of telehealth (P = .013). We did not identify any significant differences between telehealth users by community type (P = .957), population density (P = .053), income (P = .462), poverty index (P = .073), and computer (P = .211) or broadband internet access (P = .295). Conclusions: Our data suggest that internal factors such as digital health literacy and clinical site resources may have contributed to an AT’s previous telehealth use in clinical practice. However, the SDOH data extracted from the community zip code where the AT provided clinical services were similar for those with and without previous telehealth use.