Background: Digital health interventions refer to interventions designed to support health-related knowledge transfer and are delivered via digital technologies, such as mobile apps. Digital health interventions are a double-edged sword: they have the potential to reduce health inequalities, for example, by making treatments available remotely to rural populations underserved by health care facilities or by helping to overcome language barriers via in-app translation services; however, if not designed and deployed with care, digital health interventions also have the potential to increase health inequalities and exacerbate the effects of the digital divide. Objective: The aim of this study is to review ways to mitigate the digital divide through digital health intervention design, deployment, and engagement mechanisms sensitive to the needs of digitally excluded populations. Methods: This protocol outlines the procedure for a systematic scoping review that follows the methodology recommended by the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews) guidance. The following databases will be searched for primary research studies published in English from October 1, 2011, to October 1, 2021: Cochrane Library, Epistemonikos, NICE Evidence, PROSPERO, PubMed (with MEDLINE and Europe PMC), and Trip. In addition, the following sources of gray literature will be searched: Conference Proceedings Citation Index, Health Management Information Consortium, International HTA Database, OpenGrey, The Grey Literature Report, Google Scholar Basic Search UK, MedNar Deep Web Search Engine, and Carrot2. We will select publications that meet the following inclusion criteria: primary research papers that evaluated digital health interventions that describe features of digital health intervention design and deployment that enable or hinder access to and engagement with digital health interventions by adults from demographic groups likely to be affected by the digital divide (eg, older age, minority ethnic groups, lower income, and lower education level). A random selection of 25 publications identified from the search will be double screened by four reviewers. If there is >75% agreement for included/excluded publications, the team will continue to screen all the identified publications. For all included publications, study characteristics will be extracted by one author and checked for agreement by a second author, with any disagreements resolved by consensus among the study team. Consultation digital health intervention design and deployment, and digital health intervention users will also be conducted in parallel. Results: The review is underway and is anticipated to be completed by September 2022. Conclusions: The results will have implications for researchers and policy makers using digital health interventions for health improvement peripandemic and post pandemic, and will inform best practices in the design and delivery of digital health interventions. International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID): PRR1-10.2196/32538

This paper presents an evidence informed rationale for focussing on harmful gambling products and industry practices in public health messaging through the example of a recent innovation called 'Odds Are: They Win'. 'Odds Are: They Win' was initially developed through coproduction involving public health professionals and people with lived experience of gambling harms and implemented across a city-region area. A review of relevant evidence was undertaken, upon which the research team reflected to draw out the implications of 'Odds Are: They Win' for gambling harms messaging. Evidence is mounting that safer gambling campaigns framed in terms of individual responsibility are ineffective and can generate stigma. 'Odds Are: They Win' presents an alternative focus that is not anti-gambling but raises awareness of industry manipulation of the situational and structural context of gambling. This is in-keeping with historical lessons from the stop smoking field and emerging research in critical health literacy. The latter highlights the potential of education on the social and commercial determinants of health to stimulate behaviour change and collective action. 'Odds Are: They Win' is a potentially disruptive innovation for the gambling harms field. Research is required to robustly evaluate this intervention across diverse criteria, target audiences, and delivery settings.

Critical health literacy enables individuals to use cognitive and social resources for informed action on the wider determinants of health. Promoting critical health literacy early in the life-course may contribute to improved health outcomes in the long term, but children’s opportunities to develop critical health literacy are limited and tend to be school-based. This study applies a settings-based approach to analyse the potential of public libraries in England to be supportive environments for children’s development of critical health literacy. The study adopted institutional ethnography as a framework to explore the public library as an everyday setting for children. A children’s advisory group informed the study design. Thirteen children and 19 public library staff and community stakeholders were interviewed. The study results indicated that the public library was not seen by children, staff, or community stakeholders as a setting for health. Its policies and structure purport to develop health literacy, but the political nature of critical health literacy was seen as outside its remit. A supersetting approach in which children’s everyday settings work together is proposed and a conceptual model of the public library role is presented.

Background: Lived Experience (LE) involvement has been shown to improve interventions across diverse sectors. Yet LE contributions to public health approaches to address gambling-related harms remain underexplored, despite notable detrimental health and social outcomes linked to gambling. This paper analyses the potential of LE involvement in public health strategy to address gambling-related harms. It focuses on the example of a UK city-region gambling harms reduction intervention that presented multiple opportunities for LE input. Methods: Three focus groups and 33 semi-structured interviews were conducted to hear from people with and without LE who were involved in the gambling harms reduction intervention, or who had previous experience of LE-informed efforts for addressing gambling-related harms. People without LE provided reflections on the value and contributions of others’ LE to their work. Data analysis combined the Framework Method with themes developed inductively (from people’s accounts) and deductively (from the literature, including grey literature). Results: Four themes were identified: (1) personal journeys to LE involvement; (2) the value added by LE to interventions for addressing gambling-related harms; (3) emotional impacts on people with LE; and (4) collective LE and diverse lived experiences. Two figures outlining LE involvement specific to gambling harms reduction in the UK, where public health efforts aimed at addressing gambling-related harms coexist with industry-funded programmes, are proposed. Conclusions: Integrating a range of LE perspectives in a public health approach to gambling harms reduction requires local access to involvement for people with LE via diverse routes that are free from stigma and present people with LE with options in how they can engage and be heard in decision-making, and how they operate in relation to industry influence. Involving LE in gambling harms reduction requires enabling people to develop the affective and critical skills necessary to navigate complex emotional journeys and a challenging commercial and policy environment.

The cognitive and social practices associated with critical health literacy, such as critical appraisal of health messages and participation in political processes to address wider determinants of health, are of lifelong benefit. Understanding how and where critical health literacy development can be supported early in the life course may improve health outcomes now and in the future. This scoping review focuses on how critical health literacy in children is conceptualized and the supportive environments available for its development. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines are used in reporting. Evidence retrieved was eligible for inclusion if it contained a substantive conceptual or empirical study of critical health literacy in populations aged 7–11 (middle childhood). From the included 18 peer-reviewed and grey literature sources, schools are identified as the setting most associated with the development of critical health literacy in the target age group. However, the action-oriented dimension of critical health literacy is rarely supported in the school setting. The review concludes that further research is needed to clarify how and where to support children to develop critical health literacy in and outside of school settings.

Despite the volume and breadth of health literacy research related to children, children’s involvement in that research is rare. Research with children is challenging, but the principles of involvement and engagement underpin all health promotion work, including health literacy. This commentary reflects on the process of setting up a Children’s Advisory Group to consult on an institutional ethnography study of health literacy work from children’s standpoint. The Children’s Advisory Group contributed feedback on the study ethics and design and piloted methods for rapport-building and data collection, including livestreamed draw-and-describe and modified Interview to the Double. Consulting with the Children’s Advisory Group highlighted the importance of listening to children and recognizing and valuing children’s imaginative contributions to methods for involving children in health literacy research. Insights from this commentary can be used to foreground equity-focused approaches to future research and practice with children in the field of health literacy.