USA

Citation

(2005), "USA", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 18 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijhcqa.2005.06218eab.005

USA

USA

Health and literacy working together

Keywords: Health services, Patients, Empowerment, Health education, United States of America

Patients and families are increasingly getting involved in redesigning health care. One area ripe for redesign is the information professionals present to patients that even the most educated can’t discern. People who’ve only just learned to read as adults have an especially hard time making sense of health care terminology. A group of newly literate adults has been collaborating with the Iowa Health System (Des Moines, Iowa, USA) to enlighten health care providers about what, specifically, is hard to understand in health care. Their work together was recently highlighted at a two-day conference in Des Moines.

There was plenty of evidence that the New Readers, as they’re called, have had an impact: there are now improvement projects underway to simplify health education materials as well as consent documents, and hospital staff are being educated about the importance of health literacy. Mr Archie Willard, one of the leaders of Iowa’s New Readers, is now the co-chair of Iowa Health System’s Patient Safety Implementation Team. Mr Willard first learned to read as an adult and, at age 72, still struggles daily with reading and writing. He’s passionate about helping others and wants to create a safer, friendlier health delivery system. Mr Willard wrote up this report of the two-day conference.

The New Readers of Iowa’s “Health and Literacy Working Together” Conference is over. I don’t think there has ever been a state new readers conference like this one before. This health and literacy conference could be held up as a model to be used by other states. In the past someone with higher education has spoken for the adult learners. They have talked with us, asked us questions, and have written reports about us. They have gone to Congress and other groups to give their opinions on what they think it’s like for those of us with reading problems. At this conference the adult learners spoke for themselves, and people listened to and learned about our point of view of health care. In Iowa after fifteen consecutive years of adult learner conferences, we have developed leadership and we have a group of good adult leaders within our state who will speak out.

People from ten different states attended this conference. That makes the voice of this conference a lot stronger. People with literacy problems, educators, people from the medical field and others were there. If anyone takes a good look at what happened at this conference, it could be the spark that makes things come about to build better communications in health care.

There was a panel of health professionals from the Iowa Health System, with each person speaking from his/her own perspective. The message from all of them to us was to not give up on ourselves and for us, the adult learners, to tell the people in the medical field about our reading problems. They will then understand and help us. They encouraged us to ask more questions and to take more responsibility for our own health care. They also told us about how they have to struggle to provide good health care when they aren’t made aware of our poor literacy skills. We all left the conference with a better understanding of each other.

The adult learners looked at forms that the Iowa Health System uses. We told them about the things we didn’t understand about the forms, as well as pointing out the good things. The feedback about our work that I have received from the Iowa Health System has been very positive.

At the end of the first day people were able to talk about their medications with one of a group of pharmacists provided by Drake University School of Pharmacy. Being able to do this was a big hit with the adult learners. Some of them said they had been taking their medications wrong and were very pleased to receive this new information.

The most important thing the adult learners did was to make some comments and a statement concerning how we feel about health literacy. This statement will always be out there for people to see and it belongs to the adult learners who were at the Iowa Conference. You can read this statement a little further below.

A lot of good things happened at this conference – in fact there were too many to mention all of them. You just had to be there to take them all in. A lot of good people and organizations came to help and even some people who came on their own were there to help make this conference a success. I don’t know how to start to say thanks, but I do want to say, “Thank you so much!!” to you all.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) in their Health Literacy Executive Summary, “A Prescription to End Confusion,” reports problems in health care today because of poor literacy and communication skills in this country. At the Iowa Health and Literacy Working Together Conference many of these issues were brought to the surface.

My thinking about what has happened and what should come next after this conference.

Adult learners were there to help the AMA make their video, “Health Literacy – Help Your Patients Understand”, and some of the adult learners who were at the Iowa Conference were also in this video. This video could not have been possible without the help of the adult learners. The video has reached and brought awareness to thousands of doctors all over the country and it is still reaching more. Now The New Readers of Iowa have a model health literacy conference to work from. The next step should be a health literacy summit where adult learners who have experience in health literacy meet face to face with the medical field to build better communications.

For more information: www.ihi.org/IHI/Topics/Improvement/ImprovementMethods/Literature/HealthandLiteracyWorkingTogether.htm