Page 157 - Petelin, Ana, ur. 2024. Zdravje delovno aktivnih in starejših odraslih / Health of Working-Age and Older Adults. Zbornik povzetkov z recenzijo ▪︎ Book of Abstracts. Koper: Založba Univerze na Primorskem/University of Primorska Press

How effective a mobile app is in improving knowledge and awareness
of alcoholrelated harm?

1
2
Sandra Radoš Krnel , Igor Pravst 2,3,4 , Maša Hribar , Bojan Blažica , Anita Kušar 2
5
1 National Institute of Public Health, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2 Nutrition Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia
3 University of Ljubljana, Biotechnical Faculty, Ljubljana, Slovenia
4 VIST – Faculty of Applied Sciences, Ljubljana, Slovenia
5 Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Introduction: Lifestyle related health risks, such as overweight, use of alcohol and to-
bacco, work stress, and physical inactivity, have become pervasive in most modern so-
cieties. These risk factors have a debilitating impact on the wellbeing of citizens and
play a major role in the onset of many chronic diseases. As a result, working life is af-
fected due to impaired work ability, decreased productivity, absenteeism, and pre-
senteeism. In recent decades, there has been a rapid development of new technolo-
gies, including specific tools such as mobile apps, which open up new opportunities for
delivering health information and behaviour change interventions. However, despite
the large number of different mobile apps, apps for improving awareness about alco-
hol-related harm are relatively scarce. The aim of our research was to assess wheth-
er knowledge and awareness of the risks and harms associated with alcohol can be im-
proved with a mobile app.
Methods: A smartphone application called “VešKajJeš” (VKJ) enables users to scan the
barcode of a selected food item and receive feedback on its nutritional profile; for al-
coholic beverages it provides information on alcoholic content and estimated energy
value together with eleven health messages/warnings about the risks and harms of al-
cohol randomly rotating on the screen. To assess if the knowledge and awareness of
users of the VKJ app about the risks and harms associated with drinking alcohol, was
changed after exposure to the health messages we conducted the survey before and uporaba ikt rešitev na področju zdravja ... | ict solutions for health ...
after the intervention in the context of application upgrade.
Results: Significant differences in knowledge and awareness of the risks and harms
associated with drinking alcohol were found for eight of the twelve tested health warn-
ings. The improvement was seen to a greater extent in the group of high-risk drink-
ers. The results also showed that the vast majority of participants (78%) who were
exposed to the health messages supported mandatory labelling of alcoholic beverag-
es with information on ingredient listing and energy value, and 72% would like to have
health warnings on alcohol products.
Discussion and conclusions: Our study showed that health warnings presented at mobile
app as written messages together with pictograms can improve knowledge and raise
awareness of the risks and harms related to alcohol. The users of the VKJ app had a
significantly better knowledge of alcohol-related harm and risks after the intervention
in six domains considering the impact of alcohol on risk of violence, accidents and in-
juries, brain development, development of mental health problems, cancer, and alco-
hol dependence. The highest difference in awareness was found when communicating
“Alcohol can cause cancer”, which was the least known risk among the study partici-
pants. However, in order to influence not just knowledge, but also drinking behaviour,
these interventions need to be supported and reinforced by other policies that influ-
ence alcohol consumption.
Keywords: Mobile app, Alcohol, Health warnings, Alcohol-related harm, Awareness

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