Increasing Health Literacy Awareness throughout the Continuum of Care

This project seeks to introduce health literacy to Community Health Workers and front line clinical staff through the development of a health literacy curriculum and the facilitation of train-the-trainer workshops, which will provide the tools and skills to address low health literacy barriers in the communities they serve. Health literacy efforts, targeting these professions, increases awareness of health literacy throughout the continuum of care.

The curriculum is built on identified best practices from literature review, existing health literacy curricula, surveys, and focus groups. Components include: plain-language, health literacy assessments, social and cultural dynamics, patient-provider health communication skills, and teach-back method, with added focus on skill-building and client-focused tools. Current health literacy curricula are designed to the professional medical community. Our curriculum will meet the needs of CHWs and front line clinical staff in their unique role in building trusting relationships with their clients. It is based on surveyed CHWs and front line clinical staff current knowledge of health literacy, their perspective on the relevance of health literacy to their work, and strategies they may be using to support their patients' needs. The focus group results revealed the need for more competency training including communication skills and strategies for system navigation, highlighting the need of having transportability of skills from position to position.

The train-the-trainer health literacy workshops will provide education, instructional tools and programmatic guidelines, enabling master trainers to deliver the workshops, increasing the dissemination of health literacy concepts, skills, and methods.