Funding Awarded for an Outreach Award: Senior Health Outreach

Posted by Bobbi Newman on October 18th, 2017 Posted in: Funding, Public Libraries
Tags: Galter Health Sciences Library, Northwestern University, Senior Health Outreach, St. Charles Public Library

I am thrilled to announce that the Outreach Services Department of the St. Charles Public Library (consisting of David Kelsey, Dana Hintz, Lynda Spraner, and Christine Steck) has been awarded funding to partner with Galter Health Sciences Library, Northwestern University to develop and deliver presentations on healthcare and medical topics at senior facilities in the St. Charles, Illinois community.

Members of the Library’s Outreach Services Department, visit nine senior facilities, three homecare facilities, and fifteen homebound patrons a month. Outreach Services also provides weekly, biweekly, and monthly programs at seven senior facilities, engaging over two hundred and fifty patrons per month. They have noted a new demand for us to arrange and provide healthcare programming and training sessions at three of our senior independent living facilities. Outreach Services will collaborate with Galter Health Sciences Library, Northwestern University  to offer programming to teach seniors how to find high-quality health information on the web. With the assistance of trained library staff, seniors will be able to use laptops to explore healthcare databases and websites suggested by the Medical Library Association’s top health websites for health consumers and patients including MedlinePlus and CDC. The speakers will encourage additional engagement through hands-on-training activities, using authoritative databases and websites to locate quality health information. Our goal is for seniors to discover methods to live healthier lives and take better care of themselves as they age.

ABOUT Bobbi Newman
Bobbi Newman (MLIS, MA) is the Community Engagement and Outreach Specialist for NNLM R6 at the University of Iowa. She is the author of Fostering Wellness in the Workplace: A Guide for Libraries. She developed the popular NNLM course “Wellness in the Library Workplace.” Bobbi is a mindfulness student and a member of Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH). She currently serves as a member of the Advisory Board for Let’s Move in Libraries. She divides her time between her dog, reading fantasy and nonfiction, playing video games, crafting, kayaking, biking, and gardening.

Email author View all posts by Bobbi Newman