Health & Literacy: Implementation & Effects of a Community-Wide Adult Health Literacy Collaboration

To address health literacy issues in the County, a collaborative health literacy task force was established. The health literacy task force conducted an in-depth review of published literacy and health literacy research, met with key stakeholders including low literate adults, medical and literacy professionals and educators, and created an action plan to address the health literacy needs in the County. The plan included increasing awareness of low literacy and low health literacy issues within the healthcare community through marketing, sharing forums, publications and educational opportunities; creating a health literacy curricula for inclusion in adult literacy courses; implementing health literacy workshops for professionals and train-the-trainer workshops; and developing a website that would include resources and referrals for adult literacy and healthcare professionals. A collaborative partnership of the health literacy task force, adult literacy educators, and university researchers came together to design a workshop and research project that would test whether the health literacy knowledge and patient access skills of healthcare providers improves as a result of participating in health literacy workshops. Twenty workshops are scheduled to be conducted and assessed. Through examination of pre and post test data and 30 day follow-up data, awareness and action of health care providers who participated in workshops will be evaluated. The implementation and data collection is scheduled to be completed by June 2011. Analyzing the effectiveness of these sessions will guide redevelopment of the workshops and implementation of subsequent workshops. The implications for health literacy education and effects on healthcare practices will be shared.