NNLM Network of the National Library of Medicine

Library Programming

More than 90 million U.S. adults have low health literacy, which measures the extent to which someone can access necessary health services, as well as how proficiently he or she can understand pertinent health information. Public, school, academic, and special libraries play a key role in making quality health information accessible to all; What role can the public library have during Health Literacy Month or any time of the year?

Libraries Transform

The Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) and The American Library Association (ALA)’s Libraries Transform campaign have partnered to create a free toolkit for raising awareness of how libraries support health literacy in their communities. This toolkit will equip library professionals with customizable tools to promote health literacy in October and throughout the year. Consumer health librarians can also support the direct needs of health information consumers by providing materials that are multilingual, culturally appropriate and easy-to-read, and by developing methods and materials to teach consumers how to evaluate health information resources, especially those found on the Internet.

Key Message(s):

Access to trustworthy information leads to better health outcomes. Numerous studies indicate that individuals with high health literacy are more likely to use preventative care and less likely to be hospitalized. Libraries help by providing access to quality health information for library users of all ages. The National Library of Medicine is one agency that produces resources that are freely available and accessible to everyone. This includes access to general health information for patients, their families, and friends.

Promotional Use(s)/ Activity Suggestions:

• Use this statement to promote health-related resources, services, and programming at your library — you could use it as a display in your collections, print it as a poster to raise awareness in your community, or share it on social media as part of a digital marketing campaign.
• Partner with local health organizations to bring trusted experts to the library to share best practices and data relating to all kinds of health care topics.
• Libraries could host a family event to have communities discuss what a healthy community looks like to them. There could be a variety of stations with different types of activities to get folks talking and to engage different ages, e.g. a table with building blocks for children to build a healthy neighborhood, or paper and cut-outs of neighborhood buildings where children and families could paste on ways to improve their neighborhood. This could be a hands-on facilitated discussion.
• Libraries could host a community walk from the library with stops at other organizations in the neighborhood. At each stop, there could be a different local agency that has information for community members and a hands-on activity. Along the path, there could be signs with data about the health of their neighborhood gathered from the County Health Rankings website, plus books about health and posters advertising upcoming wellness events. At the end of the walk, have people share their thoughts on the statistics that were shared (the public health department may have more local data and be willing to participate as a potential partner). This could be done through short videos (that could be put on the library and other community websites) or note cards that could then be posted on a bulletin board to capture what the community says.
• Host an NNLM Reading Club book discussion!

Library Skills Training

The Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) provides in-person and online instruction. Webinars often are recorded for future viewing. Check the NNLM Training page for a complete list of programs and schedules. Effective Health Communication and Health Literacy: Understanding the Connection September 30, 2019, 1:30 - 2:30 pm ET

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) offers Plain Language Materials & Resources to help keep the reader in mind as you make decisions about organization, word choice, and presentation.

Curriculum

Health Literacy Month Handbook: The Event Planning Guide for Health Literacy Advocates from the Institute of Healthcare Advancement is a guide that can be used to create, plan, run, and evaluate events that raise awareness about health literacy. It covers topics ranging from finding people to work with and brainstorming ideas to putting an event together, marketing it, and assessing effectiveness. Throughout the Handbook, you’ll find examples and insights from others who have made Health Literacy Month events happen. Download the handbook from their website.

Staying Healthy is an award-winning curriculum available from the Florida Health Literacy Coalition. It is written at a 4th-5th grade reading level and is suitable for low intermediate level ESOL learners and above. The newly-released Staying Healthy for Beginners is written at a lower reading level, making it more accessible to learners at the high beginning level. Order the books

The Institute for Healthcare Advancement (IHA) is dedicated to empowering people to better health. Order their easy-to-read health guide book series in multiple languages with teacher manuals.

Book

Breaking down this monolithic business into the individual industries—the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and drug manufacturers—that together constitute our healthcare system, Rosenthal exposes the recent evolution of American medicine as never before. How did healthcare, the caring endeavor, become healthcare, the highly profitable industry? Hospital systems, which are managed by business executives, behave like predatory lenders, hounding patients and seizing their homes. Research charities are in bed with big pharmaceutical companies, which surreptitiously profit from the donations made by working people. Patients receive bills in code, from entrepreneurial doctors they never even saw. Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal, in clear and practical terms, spells out exactly how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care you and your family deserve. She takes the reader inside the doctor-patient relationship and to hospital C-suites, explaining step-by-step the workings of a system badly lacking transparency. This is about what we can do, as individual patients, both to navigate the maze that is American healthcare and also to demand far-reaching reform.

An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back | Elisabeth Rosenthal | Penguin Publishing Group | 2018 Reprint | 432 pages | ISBN: 978-0143110859 | WorldCat |   

Column: 6 questions to ask at every doctor's appointment by Elisabeth Rosenthal. PBS News Hour. April 27, 2017

Author

Dr. Elisabeth L. Rosenthal was appointed editor-in-chief of Kaiser Health News in 2016, after more than 2 decades with the New York Times where she covered a variety of beats from health care to environment and did a stint in the Beijing bureau. While in China, she covered SARS, bird flu and the emergence of HIV/AIDS in rural areas. Libby’s 2013-14 series, “Paying Till It Hurts,” won many prizes for both health reporting and its creative use of digital tools. Her book, “An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back” (Penguin Random House, 2017), was a New York Times best-seller and a Washington Post notable book of the year. She is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Medical School and briefly practiced medicine in a New York City emergency room before converting to journalism.

Official Twitter of Elisabeth Rosenthal

Interview

Book

In How to Be a Patient, nurse and public health advocate Sana Goldberg walks readers through the complicated and uncertain medical landscape, illuminating a path to better care. Warm and disarmingly honest, Goldberg’s advice is as expert as it is accessible. In the face of an epidemic of brusque, impersonal care she empowers readers with the information and tools to come to good decisions with their providers and sidestep the challenging realities of modern medicine. With sections like When All is Well, When It’s An Emergency, When It’s Your Person, and When You Have to Stand Up to the Industry, along with appendices to help track family history, avoid pointless medical tests, and choose when and where to undergo a procedure, How to Be a Patient is an invaluable and essential guide for a new generation of patients.

How to Be a Patient: The Essential Guide to Navigating the World of Modern Medicine | Sana Goldbert, RN | Harper Wave | 2019 reprint | 464 pages | ISBN: 978-0062797186 | WorldCat |  

Author

Sana Goldberg, RN, liaises between academia and clinical practice. She has worked with a diversity of patients across settings from the perspective of researchers, social workers, nurses, and providers. An outspoken public health advocate, she’s presented at World Congress, TEDx Harvard, The Society for Neuroscience, and OPHA, with work published in Neuropharmacology, The European Journal of Neuroscience, and forthcoming in the Atlantic. She is the recipient of the Diamond Alumni Award, a member of the International Honor Society of Nursing, and the founder of Nightingale, a movement of story, art, and activism for health equity. She practices in New Haven, CT, while pursuing graduate studies at Yale.

Official Website of Sana Goldberg RN

Interview​

Book

A radical argument for how health has little to do with medicine - and how America gets it wrong and offering an explanation for why people in the U.S., despite spending more on health than any other country, remain less healthy and live shorter lives than people in other rich nations. The book considers how the fabric of the U.S. - its history, wealth, politics, and power - contributes to shorter, less healthy lives relevant to current conversations around healthcare reform, environmental deregulation, the implications of tax reform, welfare and entitlement programs, and immigration.

Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health | Sandro Galea | Oxford University Press | 2019 | 304 pages | ISBN: 978-0190916831 | WorldCat |  

Review

'Well' Explores the Social and Political Underpinnings of Health by Stephanie O'Neill. NPR: Shots. June 4, 2019

Author

Sandro Galea is Dean and Robert A. Knox Professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. He has been named an "epidemiology innovator" by Time and one of the "World's Most Influential Scientific Minds" by Thomson Reuters. A native of Malta, he has served as a field physician for Doctors Without Borders and held academic positions at Columbia University, the University of Michigan, and the New York Academy of Medicine. At the time of his current appointment, he was the youngest dean of a school of public health in the United States.

Official Website of Sandro Galea

Interview