Internet Use Behavior of Leprosy Control Program Staff at Indonesia’s Public Health Center, How Are Their E-Health Literacy?

Objectives: Indonesia have started to implement Health Information System (HIS) at public health centers (PHC) for collecting and reporting data. Commonwealth‘s report showed the fact that digital health literacy in developing country is still low. This study has two objectives. The first objective is to describe internet and computer behavior among leprosy control staff at public health centers at Pekalongan District, Indonesia and the second one is to measure their e-health literacy. Methods: Pekalongan District has 27 PHC and all of them were observed by this study. Respondents of this research were 55 responsible staff of leprosy control program (LCP). They consist of leprosy district supervisor, PHC’s managers and leprosy staff. This study used a modification of the graphic, visualization, and usability (GVU) center's WWW user questionnaire to capture internet behavior and an e-heals scale questionnaire to measure e-health literacy of LCP staff. Results: This study found that some of staff never used internet and computer, the percentage was 10.9 percent and 7.3 percent respectively. Only 14.5 percent of leprosy staff ever took computer/internet class. Leprosy staff‘s computer skill was higher than internet skill, the data showed 43.6 percent of staff had poor internet skill whereas 38.2 percent had poor computer skill. The strength of internet signal at PHC in Pekalongan District was not stable, furthermore 60 percent of leprosy staff never accessed internet from their office. Result from e-heals scale showed that more than 80 percent of leprosy staff knew where they could find health resource from internet and more than 75 percent also could judge the quality resources from the internet. Further more than 60 percent staff were confident using information from the internet. Leprosy staff had e-heals score range between 20.83 and 48 from maximum score 50. The mean of score and the standard deviation were 38.44 and 4.16, respectively. Conclusion: The deployment of HIS in Indonesia’s LCP is noteworthy, furthermore the computer and internet skills of leprosy staff need to be increased. Doing intensive training before implementation any kind of HIS in PHC is urgent to accomplish. This activities could prevent the failure of deployment of the system and maintain the sustainability of using the systems in the future.