Health Literacy: A blueprint to health equity in the Latino immigrant community

The “Instruccion en Salud Latina” (ISLA), is a health literacy program developed for monolingual Latinos who are not proficient in English, have low literacy in their native language and, due to limited comprehension, misuse health services. The goals of this academic-community partnership project are to enhance health literacy skills of monolingual Latino immigrants and use community feedback to set in motion changes in the communication choices of both partner organizations. Program objectives: 1) Provide health literacy teaching in Spanish by emphasizing oral learning. 2) Substantively improve acquisition of basic health literacy knowledge and skills. 3) Directly change the self-perceptions of participants so that they can recognize their strengths and confront their literacy challenges openly and without shame. 4) Apply outcome data to bring up to date nursing curriculum content related to health literacy at the undergraduate and graduate level. 5) Influence change within the programs provided by the community organization by promoting the use of plain language and culturally appropriate means of communicating with their Spanish-speaking customer. Participants are recruited through health fairs and community selected 2 hour workshops. The curriculum is based on Freire's model and provides activity driven classes in Spanish to build oral, print, cultural and conceptual knowledge and basic numeracy, one-on-one and group health literacy coaching, and trips to nursing simulation laboratories, pharmacies and supermarkets. The partnership has provided health literacy training to more than 150 nursing students and program staff, extensive services to more than 50 people and short-range screening services to over 600 people.