A Vision for a More Health Literate Missouri: Building a Statewide Health Literacy Center

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A Vision for a More Health Literate Missouri
Building a Statewide Health Literacy Center

• Center for Plain Language Symposium
• November 7, 2008
• National Press Club
• Washington D.C.
• Arthur Culbert, Ph.D.
• Senior Advisor to
• Missouri Foundation for Health

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Definition

• Health Literacy is the degree to which
  individuals have the capacity to obtain, process,
  and understand basic health information and
  services needed to make appropriate health
  decisions.
• (Healthy People 2010)

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Low health literacy contributes to

• Misunderstanding
• Mistakes
• Excess hospitalizations
• Poor health outcomes
• Unnecessary deaths

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Size of the problem

• Low health literacy
• U.S. 90 million
• MO. 1.6 million

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Size of the problem
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Estimated annual costs of low health literacy to
the economy

• U.S. 106 to 238 billion
• Missouri 3.3 to 7.8 billion
• Vernon J. et al, 2007

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Cost of Low Health Literacy in Missouri
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Todays talk

• State wide efforts in health literacy
• Health Literacy Missouri (HLM)
• Role of plain Language

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States Efforts

• Midwest
• Minnesota Health Literacy Partnership 06
• Iowa Center for Health Literacy 08
• Wisconsin Literacy Inc. 08
• Health Literacy Missouri 09

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History

• MFH discovered health literacy components in
  previous proposals (2002-2005)
• Awarded 2.1 million in 2007 as part of 5 years
  funding
• Open a statewide health literacy center in 2009

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Guiding Principles

• Engage Community Partners
• Inclusive
• Responsive
• Relationship Building
• Put Consumer First
• User Driven
• Easy to Use
• Sustainable
• Innovate Strategically
• Find niche

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Vision and Mission

• The vision of Health Literacy Missouri is to
  become a national leader in health literacy with
  a mission to improve the health of all
  Missourians.

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Philosophy

• DOES NOT BLAME VICTIM, but rather
• Creates systematic change in provider patient
  encounter environment
• Offers educational resources that help providers
  communicate effectively with patients
• Provides access to plain language health care
  information

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Partners
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Systems Thinking

• Coordinating Council
• Engage in open dialogue
• Build collaboration to create group genius
• Determine consensus of priorities
• Develop strategic plan for the Health Literacy
  Missouri Center to open in 2009

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Activities

• Health literacy and plain language
• Retained Maine Health Literacy Institute to
  provide training in clear health communication to
  all involved in HLM

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Activities

• Identified priority health literacy needs and
  concerns of Missourians
• Completed a national survey of health care
  journalists
• Conducted extensive open-ended interviews with
  100 health literacy leaders

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Activities

• Raised visibility of HLM
• Cosponsored with CDC town hall meeting May 2008
• Incited activity in health literacy with in
  Missouri
• Determined economic cost to Missouri
• Field testing living with diabetes guide
  developed by the American College of Physicians
• Supporting the development of GSI mapping
  software to determine hot spots of low literacy

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Hot spots of low literacy
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St. Louis Health Literacy Level by Tract
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Activities

• Identified 10,000 health literacy resources
• Classifying by type and developing criteria for
  evaluating
• Inventory of health literacy resources will
• Be easily accessible
• Be well organized
• Be user friendly
• Meet user's needs
• Target community- based organizations, health
  care providers, adults with low health literacy

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Health Literacy Depot

• Step 1 visit http//www.healthliteracymisouri.or
  g/ (open to the public in December 2009)
• Step 2 click on Health Literacy Depot

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Health Literacy Depot

• Step 3 Choose from a drop down the area of
  health literacy you are interested in addressing
• Developing plain language documents
• Creating shame free patient provider environment
• Developing appropriate signage within an
  organization
• Creating an evaluation instrument to measure the
  success of an organizations efforts to remedy
  low health literacy in the work place

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Health Literacy Curriculum

• Target Population ALL health professions
  students, and providers
• Activities
• Curricula to raise awareness and provide best
  practices for health professional students and
  providers
• Health literacy training through Missouri AHEC
  pre- health professional students

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Demonstration Projects

• Engage the community in creative ways to advance
  health literacy

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Demonstration Projects
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Social Marketing

• Health literacy awareness campaign across
  Missouri
• Strategic press releases developed and delivered
  monthly to
• 265 newspapers
• 35 Television stations

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Strategic Communications Work
Each press release begins as a template, to be
localized for each region
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Strategic Communications Work
Local graphics are created for each region.
Research has shown that including graphics with
the release increase the chance of having it used.
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Strategic Communications Work
With the graphics in place, the local quotes,
statistics and other information is inserted and
then the release is sent out to the targeted media
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Health Literacy Surveillance

• Target Population general public and health care
  providers
• Activities
• Plan and administer assessments of health
  literacy to the general public and health care
  professionals
• Analyze data and report findings
• Findings will serve as baseline measures to
  evaluate year-to-year progress in health literacy
  

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Conclusion

• Yes We Can!!
• Lots going on
• Building on Foundation of plain language
• Strategy for reforming health care