Well-designed service-learning projects encourage a multi-disciplinary approach that equitably involves community members, organizational representatives, researchers, students, and others in all aspects of the research process. All partners contribute expertise and share in the projects decision-making and ownership. Librarian leadership and participation in service-learning projects can strengthen and scale health literacy interventions that build resilience to misinformation for diverse audiences.

In this presentation, the speaker will share strategies for developing and launching service-learning projects that promote health literacy education. She will describe her use of community-based participatory research strategies to design and deploy health literacy interventions that mitigate and protect against the infodemic and its harmful effects.

Bethany McGowan is an Associate Professor in the Libraries and School of Information Studies at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA. Her teaching, research, and engagement promote health literacy education with a focus on understanding and improving health information-seeking behavior in marginalized communities. As a Purdue Service-Learning Fellow (2022) and Scholarship of Engagement Fellow (2022-23), she has developed two service-learning projects that promote information literacy education–Diplomacy Lab: Strategies for Identifying Dis/Misinformation (in partnership with the U.S. Department of State) and Leading Health Literacy Education in Central Indiana (in partnership with IU Health). Professor McGowan is also a World Health Organization-trained Infodemic Manager.

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