Announcing the NN/LM PNR 2015-2016 Award Recipients

Posted by Carolyn Martin on May 7th, 2015 Posted in: Funding, News From NNLM PNR

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In response to our December post announcing NN/LM PNR funding opportunities, the following 13 Network members submitted excellent applications for various awards. Here are brief summaries of their funded projects, to be carried out between May 1, 2015 and April 30, 2016 during the final year of the 2011-2016 NN/LM PNR program. Congratulations to all!

Technology Improvement Award

Project Title: Instructional Technology Upgrade
Project Lead: Basia Delawska-Elliott, Medical Library Specialist, Providence St.Vincent Medical Center, Portland, OR
Summary: Providence Health & Services and Swedish Health libraries reorganized at the end of 2014 to provide a system-wide library service involving several facilities in several states. This project will fund purchase of laptops, screencasting software and conferencing/online instruction software for a system-wide training plan to introduce library resources, library services and information literacy to even the most remote Providence and Swedish outposts. The intended outcome is equitable access to library resources across all Providence and Swedish regions and facilities, and greater familiarity with library resources and services by medical and nursing staff, and employees across the Providence Health & Services and Swedish Health regions.

Project Title: Improving Digital Literacy for Underserved Families of Children with Developmental Disabilities and Ongoing Health Care Needs in Whatcom County
Project Lead: Christine Griffin, Program Coordinator, Parent to Parent of Whatcom County, Bellingham, WA
Summary: Parent to Parent of Whatcom County serves as a crucial resource and support organization to parent/caregivers of children (birth to 21) with developmental delays, disabilities and ongoing health care needs. This project will fund the purchase of two laptops and tablets, and mobile projector to support the development of a mobile learning center to reach members of the Latino/Hispanic community to provide education on MedlinePlus and mobile MedlinePlus. By providing presentations and trainings to various areas of the county the organization’s goal is to improve their outreach to the Latino community and to assist parents in navigating medical and developmental disability support systems while improving their health literacy.

Project Title: Equal Access to Health Information
Project Lead: Sayaka Omori, Family Services Program Manager, Open Doors for Multicultural Families, Kent, WA
Summary: This project will create accessible, linguistically and culturally appropriate demonstration DVD education and outreach clips for parents of children with disabilities and special healthcare needs. As a result, parents with limited English proficiency or literacy skills will learn about resources with accurate and reliable health information, including MedlinePlus.gov and other websites with resources in multiple languages.

Project Title: Expanding Educational Opportunities
Project Lead: Lynn Gerlach, Development and Communication Manager, Northwest Regional Primary Care Association (NWRPCA), Seattle, WA
Summary: NWRPCA offers education and training for community health centers (CHCs) within HRSA Region X (Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington). This includes 101 NWRPCA members, of which 81 are health centers representing over 500 individual sites, as well as non-affiliated CHCs within the four-state region. By replacing or upgrading outdated presentation equipment used by speakers at the NWRPCA conferences and seminars and purchasing advanced distance learning software to expand a growing catalog of online courses, NWRPCA will improve educational capabilities in both face-to-face settings and distance learning modalities.

Project Title: Bilingual Patient Education
Project Lead: Amy Webb, Chief Operating Officer, Cascade Medical, Leavenworth, WA
Summary: This project will provide the Cascade Medical Clinic health providers with tools necessary to create customized libraries of patient education materials to meet the unique needs of their individual patient panels. The use of mobile tablets and access to professional video patient education and MedlinePlus.gov during clinic visits will increase exposure to educational materials for patients and may translate into improved understanding of medical conditions and compliance with recommended courses of treatment.

 

Express Outreach Award

Project Title: Health Reach: Technology as a Pathway for Better Senior Health Access
Project Lead: Noel Nicolai, Education and Library Coordinator, Pullman Regional Hospital Foundation, Pullman, WA
Summary: The goal of this project is to improve consumer health literacy for Whitman county seniors by promoting access to credible health information resources through interactive training with healthcare and library professionals.

Project Title: Dental Village Express Outreach Program
Project Lead: Dr. Robin Jones, President, Children’s International Health Relief Nonprofit Organization, Tacoma, WA
Summary: This project will address dental health literacy among multicultural, immigrant and underserved children, adolescents, and adults by educating them on using their mobile devices and laptops to access National Library of Medicine resources rather than relying on Google searches.

 

Health Disparities Information Outreach Award

Project Title: Expanding Children’s Mental Healthcare in Butte/SilverBow
Project Lead: Brenda Hergott, Executive Director, Butte 4-C’s, Butte, MT
Summary: This project will be a collaborative initiative by Butte/SilverBow’s Early Childhood Coalition (the Butte Community Council) and Children’s Mental Health Committee to increase awareness of children’s mental health services and resources on behalf of children with mental health issues.
Health Information Services Award

Project Title: Neighborhood Health Link: Community Connections for Helping Relationships
Project Lead: Carol Cahill, Research Associate, Group Health Research Institute, Seattle, WA
Summary: Neighborhood Health Link (NHLink) is a Group Health-sponsored, 508-compliant web-based portal to community resources in King and Pierce counties for healthy eating, active living, and management of chronic conditions such as diabetes. This project will target outreach and training on use of NHLink to those who engage in “helping relationships” with patients and clients in clinical and community settings, such as community health workers/community resource specialists, chronic disease managers, client advocates, and librarians.

Project Title: Healthy Teeth and Healthy Body
Project Lead: April Krubally, President, The Backpack Academy, Seattle, WA
Summary: To encourage the students and families of the broader African-American community to take care of their bodies using an onsite kiosk of healthcare pamphlets as well as information provided in the form of lectures and demonstrations by a dental hygienist and health care practitioner. The MedlinePlus.gov website will be demonstrated during workshop lectures, and serve as a supportive informational link for families to follow-up with, after scheduled monthly lectures.

 

Medical Library Pilot Project Award

Project Title: Supporting Writing Development in the Health Sciences: Bringing the Writing Center to the Library
Project Lead: Terry Jankowski, Assistant Director for User Experience, University of Washington Health Sciences Library, Seattle, WA
Summary: The UW Health Sciences Library will partner with the Odegaard Writing & Research Center (OWRC) to implement trial writing appointments within the library space to support and improve student access to scientific writing support for the needs of scholars in health science fields. The support will be well-tailored to unique challenges students face in balancing their demands as writers and scholars while developing as practitioners.

Project Title: Catalyzing a Culture of Open Science
Project Lead: Robin Champieux, Scholarly Communication Librarian, Oregon Health & Science University Library, Portland, OR
Summary: The OHSU Library will address upstream origins of access by influencing how research results are shared. Through a four-part series of round table events and a scholarship program to OpenCon 2015, the library will provide a forum for addressing and affecting students’ and early career researchers’ knowledge and esteem for open science practices.

 

Regional Symposium Award

Project Title: Regional Symposium on Biomedical Science Curriculum
Project Lead: Renee Harris, Health Science Education Specialist, University of Montana, Mansfield Library, Helena, MT
Summary:  The Symposium on Biomedical Science Curriculum will strengthen STEM, and establish a network connecting the high school teachers trained in the Biomedical Sciences curriculum with faculty at U of Montana. As a followup, the BMS teachers will be surveyed in Dec 2015 and again in April 2016, to track ways their students are using NLM resources presented at the symposium.