{"id":15146,"date":"2013-08-16T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-16T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pmedicine.org\/epatients\/?p=15146"},"modified":"2013-08-13T14:03:55","modified_gmt":"2013-08-13T18:03:55","slug":"resources-for-health-literacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/participatorymedicine.org\/epatients\/2013\/08\/resources-for-health-literacy.html","title":{"rendered":"Resources for health literacy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kathy Kastner<\/p><\/div>\n

Guest blogger Kathy Kastner gives us an overview of the health literacy resources on the Internet.\u00a0It is an important topic \u2013 how can patients be engaged and participatory if they don\u2019t understand what they are told? Kathy Kastner is Blogger and Curator for\u00a0bestendings.com\u00a0<\/a>and\u00a0ability4life.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Health literacy fascinates me because it’s so much more than writing for a specific grade (3,5,8 )level. It’s context and interpretation, layout and font size (in print), and tone and body language (in person)<\/p>\n

The American Medical Association has a terrific video<\/a>,’ You can’t tell by looking’ http:\/\/www.ama-assn.org\/\/ama\/pub\/about-ama\/ama-foundation\/our-programs\/public-health\/health-literacy-program\/health-literacy-video.page<\/a> (alert Facebook Group: ‘But you don’t look sick’)<\/p>\n

The Harvard School of Public Health {http:\/\/www.hsph.harvard.edu\/healthliteracy\/practice\/innovative-actions\/<\/a>} has a list of print assessment tools <\/a>– including the SAM Score from early health literacy innovators, Len and Ceci Doak, who wrote the classic text: Teaching patients with low literacy skills<\/a>. {http:\/\/www.hsph.harvard.edu\/healthliteracy\/resources\/teaching-patients-with-low-literacy-skills\/<\/a>}<\/p>\n

Health literacy maven, Helen Osborne, founder of Health Literacy Month [http:\/\/www.healthliteracy.com\/<\/a>] and Health Literacy Out Loud podcasts [http:\/\/www.healthliteracyoutloud.com\/about\/<\/a> ] counsels using metaphors – which have to be appropriate to the person’s experience (for someone like me who’s never seen a pump, ‘the heart is like a pump’ is just one more thing to grapple with)<\/p>\n

There are worthwhile visual tools to check out from Communication Disabilities Across Canada http:\/\/www.accpc.ca\/<\/a>\u00a0and The Institute for Healthcare Advancement has a terrific annual conference, and materials on their website.
\nhttp:\/\/www.iha4health.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n

There’s an emerging raft of online discussion:<\/p>\n