New directions: Navigating health information literacy training

Studies indicate that health information literacy among medical patients improves patients' understanding of their diseases and conditions and increases compliance with care and treatment recommendations. This poster describes the partnership between community health workers and the library at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, highlighting key findings from a series of focus groups in which community health workers provided significant input in the development of library services.

In San Antonio, the University Health Center Downtown (UHC-D) is the "mothership" of a network of community health clinics. The UHC-D provides care to a population that is primarily low-income and predominately Hispanic. The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the UHC-D improves comprehensive patient care and communication through an expanding system of "health navigators," and community health workers, who provide continuity of care, support, and assistance from the clinic to the community. An important role of the navigators is to improve the health information literacy of the patient and the patient's family to help them understand diseases and conditions, diagnoses and treatments. The library provides training for the Clinic's health navigators and community health workers using resources for professional health information like PubMed® and reliable consumer health resources such as MedlinePlus® and MedlinePlus en Español®, which they can share with patients and families.