Mobile School Health Information Initiative (MoSHI): Creating health information champions among K-12 librarians in St. Louis

BACKGROUND: School health programs routinely emphasize school nurses, counselors, and teachers, while overlooking school librarians as key partners in school health. Many school librarians are solo practitioners, lacking time or training to provide quality health information, while also managing facilities, budgets and helping with writing-intensive classes. PURPOSE: Report on a curriculum training K-12 librarians to connect with credible health information on the web. SETTING/PARTICIPANTS/RESOURCES: Midwestern private medical school and selected community partners. Investigators developed and tested the pilot curriculum in 2009. They obtained external funding to enable the curriculum to be delivered for free throughout the St. Louis metro area. To date, the revised course reached over 50 personnel. EVALUATION METHOD: Logic model used to create evaluations done in class and via 3-month follow up web survey. RESULTS: Evaluations indicate the curriculum successfully equips school librarians to be health information champions within their schools. Participants report increased confidence locating credible health information. They come away with actionable ideas for cross-disciplinary collaboration in the curriculum, seeing how to integrate health information in subjects beyond science. They also gain experience evaluating health messages through the lens of media literacy, now required by Missouri Grade-Level Expectations. Written comments indicate both short-term gains and sustained use of the knowledge after 3 months. RECOMMENDATIONS: Written comments indicate continued need for similar programs. Curricula like MoSHI could be part of multipronged efforts to improve health literacy in schools.