Funding Awarded for Digital Health Literacy Workshops

Posted by Derek Johnson on May 16th, 2018 Posted in: Funding, Success Stories
Tags: Success Stories

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The GMR office is excited to announce that Wisconsin Health Literacy (WHL) has been granted a Health Information Outreach Award for its project, Health Online: Finding Information You Can Trust.

Background:

A recent WHL survey of literacy tutors found that a significant number of their adult students wish they could do better in finding online information on health symptoms, resources to help them stay healthy, and resources in other languages. Nearly half also wanted help scanning health websites to find what’s relevant to them. These needs may result in part from the fact that those with low literacy use websites different. They find scanning difficult, have problems searching, are less likely to scroll, and are easily overwhelmed by dense text, small font size, and too many links.

Project Description

Wisconsin Health Literacy (WHL) will offer 32 “digital health literacy” workshops for consumers most at risk for low health literacy, including seniors and individuals with low literacy. Workshops will be offered in collaboration with community partners that are scattered across the state and will include non-profit literacy councils, public libraries, Aging and Disability Resource Centers (ADRCs), senior centers, Indian tribes, refugee organizations, and community health centers. A second project component involves providing 4 regional workshops for librarians, especially in rural areas, on how to effectively help persons with low health literacy find trustworthy health information.

Outcomes

Funding for this project will assist in achieving four overarching goals:

1. Help consumers, especially from underrepresented populations and those at risk for low health literacy, identify and effectively use trustworthy sources of on-line health information.
2. Increase use of the internet for health information as a result of increased consumer confidence.
3. Assist community librarians in their ability to help consumers identify trustworthy sources of health information and to offer an ongoing program for their communities.
4. Help consumers find, use and understand tools and resources available through the National Network of Libraries of Medicine and National Library of Medicine.