Oral

Health literacy is an important public health issue for everyone. It is especially important for low-income and vulnerable populations for whom access to quality health care may be especially challenging. The Institute of Medicine has identified cultural biases and prejudice and contributing factors to health disparities. This session will begin with a presentation of the important role of health literacy in achieving public health goals, and discuss issues around the assessment of health literacy. We will discuss the cultural competence of healthcare providers in meeting the needs of diverse populations, with a description of a strategy to assess the efficacy of cultural a competency training program. Our next presentation will describe the use of low-literacy asthma education materials to enhance provider-patient communication and improve self-management of asthma for high-risk children. We will then describe a strategy to bring fire safety measures to hard to reach populations, including to people for whom English is a second language, through distribution of low-literacy health education/injury prevention materials. Finally, we will describe a program using trained medical interpreters to facilitate communication between Latino patients with multiple sclerosis and their doctors.

Session Objectives: At the end of this session, participants will be better able to: • Evaluate and discuss the strengths and limitations of existing quantitative and qualitative measures of health literacy • Discuss the implications of differing definitions of health literacy for health policy and planning • Learn about standardized cultural competency training models such as the Cultural Competency Continuing Education Program developed by the HHS Office of Minority health • Understand the impact of cultural competency on health outcomes • Describe methods of enhancing patient/provider communication through the use of low-literacy patient education materials

CE Credits: CME, Health Education (CHES), Nursing