Health literacy education of women in an urban slum: Sheila blogs from #ecil2017

Allison Frances Wren presented a paper (coauthored with Priyanka Idicula, Amy Davies, Rob Davies) on The Impact of Health Literacy Education on Womens’ Perceptions and Understanding of Maternal Health in a Kochi Urban Slum at European Conference on Information Literacy. The speaker was presenting results of the initial phase of a project (funded by Hardie Wren), and the first pahse was finding out about the women and their lives. Data was collected about various beliefs, behaviours and things such as income. For example, as regards menstruation, many of them said that mothers would not talk to their daughters about this, and in many ways it was seen as unclean. 80% said that they had heard of contraception, but did not use it (this could be connected with a former forced contraception programme).The slide shown above means that there were good signs/practice in terms of diet, avoiding smoking and alcohol, education and breastfeeding (but not so much with the things listed on the right).
The next phases involves health clinics and monthly classes: this is underway. Barriers to participation include "slum wars" (not attending events in other districts). It was emphasised how understanding the context was vital.
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