Need to find the right image for your presentation? Once you find it, do you know how you can use it? This short workshop will cover Fair Use, Public Domain, Creative Commons and other issues in the use of images for teaching and presentations.

Please join us for Eccles Express:

Thursday, April 18
11:30 am – 12:00 pm
HSEB 3100 D

For questions on this workshop, please contact Nancy Lombardo: Nancy.Lombardo@utah.edu

Resources:

Digital Images – where to find them and whats legal
Using Digital Images URLs – Handout

We’ve built a research guide to help you learn more. This guide includes information about what sex and gender differences research is, funding resources and information on women’s health.

Find it here: http://campusguides.lib.utah.edu/sexandgender

Please contact Amy Honisett at amy.honisett@utah.edu or 801-587-9246 with questions or comments.

Access the handouts and the slides here: http://bit.ly/11HIgJo

The session covered:

• What is the difference between sex and gender?
• How do sex and gender affect health?
• Why is it important to include sex and gender differences in research?
• Where can I find more information and resources?
• What is the Office of Research on Women’s Health?

You can find more resources in this guide: http://campusguides.lib.utah.edu/sexandgender

As part of this effort, the Eccles Library will be focusing its social media on a different women’s health topic each week.

If you’re interested in the importance of sex and gender differences for research and practice in the health sciences, be sure to follow any or all of the Spencer S. Eccles Health social media channels: Twitter, Facebook or this blog.

]]> http://library.med.utah.edu/blog/eccles/2013/03/19/2962/feed/ 0 http://library.med.utah.edu/blog/eccles/2013/03/14/2932/ http://library.med.utah.edu/blog/eccles/2013/03/14/2932/#comments Thu, 14 Mar 2013 22:47:26 +0000 ahonisett http://library.med.utah.edu/blog/eccles/?p=2932 The Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library and the Health Sciences Student Council (HSSC) welcome you to an informational session.

Join us:

March 20, 2013 from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in the Health Sciences Education Building (HSEB), room 3515 B.

We will enjoy light refreshments and learn:

• What is the difference between sex and gender?
• How do sex and gender affect health?
• Why is it important to include sex and gender differences in research?
• Where can I find more information and resources?
• What is the Office of Research on Women’s Health?

Questions? Contact Amy Honisett at amy.honisett@utah.edu or 801-587-9246

1. Register a team by March 4th.
Email Erica Lake: erica.lake@utah.edu

2. Create a 30-second to 1-minute public service announcement.

Choose any health literacy issue, such as:

• Failure to take medications correctly
• Overuse of the emergency room
• Medical diagnoses being made at later stages

3.  Submit your video to Erica Lake by March 25th.

Contest winners will have their PSA aired on a local TV station, featured on Dr. Vivian Lee’s blog, and promoted on university websites and social media outlets. All participants will be entered into a drawing for a new Kindle.

Contact Erica Lake for more information
erica.lake@utah.edu :: 801-581-4685

Trusted Clinical References

• Evidence-Based Medicine Guidelines
• Pocket Guide to Diagnostic Tests

Literature Support for Evidence-Based Practice

• Unbound MEDLINE
• Links to full-text articles that are available via University of Utah journal subscriptions
• Clinical Search provides a filtered search of the MEDLINE database so you can choose to see only results having to do with therapy, diagnosis, etiology or prognosis

Grapherence – A Visual Journal Exploration Tool

• Interactive search capability that visually represents the influence and interrelationships of journal articles

uCentral is available to all University of Utah faculty, staff and students via the web without registration. You may also register for a free personal uCentral account that allows you to personalize the interface and download content onto your mobile device.

Read more about uCentral or watch this brief demo and learn how to get started using this exciting new tool!

For more information about accessing and using uCentral contact Christy Jarvis; 801-581-3031.

Available in English and Spanish.

For more information, contact either

• Alice Weber, Alice.weber@utah.edu or 801-587-9247
• Eccles Library front desk, ehsl-reference@lists.utah.edu or 801-581-8772.

Obesity is common, serious, and costly. More than one-third of adults (35.7%) and approximately 17% of children and adolescents are obese.

To confront this epidemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is collaborating “with public health researchers and practitioners, partners, state and community leaders to raise awareness, share evidence-based strategies.”  Since visual messages are among the most powerful in today’s society, the CDC has developed a series of four videos that document the consequences, costs, and challenges for confronting obesity as part of their “Weight of the Nation” campaign:

• Part 1: Consequences
• Part 2: Choices
• Part 3: Children in Crisis
• Part 4: Challenges

The videos are just over one hour in length, and premiered May 14-15 on HBO. Below is the first video to get our readers started.

How has obesity adversely affected your life, or the lives of those you care about? If you have overcome obesity, how did you do it? Tell us!

Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and Ask.com are by and large effective search engines for helping lay users get health and medical information. Nevertheless, the current ranking methods have some pitfalls and there is room for improvement to help users get more accurate and useful information. We suggest that search engine users explore multiple search engines to search different types of health information and medical knowledge for their own needs and get a professional consultation if necessary.

Researchers searched for “breast cancer” using the four top search engines, combined the top 200 non-redundant results from each source into a list, and then gave that list to eight volunteers to evaluate, scoring there relevance to research on a scale of 0-10 (low to high). Volunteers were all highly educated, most of them with backgrounds in science. They were provided with six “gold standard” sites for information on this topic to compare against before making their determination:

1. U.S. National Cancer Institute
2. American Cancer Society
3. Mayo Clinic
4. MedicineNet
5. Wikipedia
6. Susan G. Komen for the Cure

The volunteers tended to score the popular science and personal websites the highest overall, while scoring corporation and advertising websites the lowest. Researchers conclude that search engines do provide good information overall, though their sample is small, both in number of participants and topics searched.

This study has a number of serious flaws in it, and begs the question: is a little bit of mediocre research better than no research at all? First, the high education levels of the volunteer evaluators, plus their choices to score popular science websites above commercial websites indicate high levels of information literacy. Yet other research shows that over 90 million adults in the U.S. (36% of the population) have poor health literacy. How would people like this evaluate and select the right sources using a search engine? As any librarian watching patrons search will tell you, most people never look beyond the first three search results, let alone the first page of results. And search engines like Google employ algorithms to customize search results based on your previous searches, which may or may not give you the best resources.

Next, the researchers note the shortcomings of search engines in “ranking the websites according to their usefulness,” and recommend that “users apply multiple search engines when looking for medical and health information online, instead of using only a single search engine.” As a librarian and past computer consultant, I’ve learned that many people cannot distinguish between “the Internet” and a web browser, let alone utilize and critically evaluate search engines and the search results they generate. Librarians and researchers are the professionals best suited to handle that task.

Finally, while the “gold standard” sites probably contain all the basic information on breast cancer from the view of their medical expert, how readable and understandable is their content across different groups and ability levels? Had the researchers chosen to include a librarian on their team, she or he could have provided important insight and evaluation of these sites in this area. And why was a site like MedicineNet included while MedlinePlus was excluded from the short list? MedlinePlus is advertisement-free, offers information in Spanish and other languages, and is written at a level that can be understood by a wider audience.

While search engines will, generally speaking, help end users find helpful health and medical information, the will inevitably lead some people to inaccurate or misleading information. And with so many people having low information and health literacy skills, it is imperative that they be directed to quality, evidence-based resources for answers to their questions. This study does nothing to assist in that endeavor.

References:

Kutner, M. (2007). Literacy in everyday life: Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy.

Wang, L., Wang, J., Wang, M., Li, Y., Liang, Y., & Xu, D. (2012). Using Internet Search Engines to Obtain Medical Information: A Comparative Study. Journal of medical Internet research, 14(3).

Reference:

1.    Weinstein D. Pre-op videos may ease recovery for cancer patients: study – Medical Marketing and Media. May 3, 2012 2012;2012(May 7):News article about recent study in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

2.    Crabtree TD, Puri V, Bell JM, et al. Outcomes and Perception of Lung Surgery with Implementation of a Patient Video Education Module: A Prospective Cohort Study. Journal of the American College of Surgeons. 2012;214(5):816-821.e812.

Looking for resources to improve health literacy and communication at your medical practice? The Health Literacy section of the AMA’s website toolkits, patient safety tip cards, and other resources to assist providers. Also, the Agency for Healthcare and Research Quality (AHRQ) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has resources for addressing health literacy and cultural competency.

What tools have you found helpful in improving patient health literacy? Tell us about it!

Reference:

Pawlak, R. (2005). Economic considerations of health literacy. Nurs Econ, 23(4), 173-180, 147.

Villanueva-Whitman, E. (2012). Communication is key to better health care  Retrieved April 26, 2012, from http://www.DesMoinesRegister.com/article/20120410/LIFE/304100053

When talking about cancer or any other life-threatening medical condition, numbers about risk, results, etc. can begin to blur for any patient. Having a tool like this to provide a clear visualization can help any woman and her doctor think through medical decisions more carefully. The website does note that the calculations this tool is based on ” calculations result from a computer simulation model, not a clinical trial.” Long-term validation studies of this tool are needed to confirm its accuracy.

But a woman facing important decisions about breast cancer risk and prevention needs the best information available now, and this tool appears to be a good way to help visualize the risks and benefits of treatment options and timing, in consultation with a physician. And being online, rather than in print, it is free and immediately available. Kudos to Standford for developing this important resource!

Health literacy is the ability to get information, understand it, and use information to lower risk and better health.

In addition, this site posted a YouTube video from Harvard School of Public Health’s Dr. Rima Rudd, Senior Lecturer on Society, Human Development, and Health. In it, she talks about the “Perspective” article she wrote for the New England Journal of Medicine on improving Americans’ health literacy.

Unfortunately, NEJM’s link to one of the sources cited in her paper is not working properly, namely, the report “Literacy & Health Outcomes” from AHRQ (the link to the left works). If only librarians had been consulted in the building of the Internet and World Wide Web…

…is being outpaced by most other developed countries when it comes to improvements in health outcomes, according to a new analysis by a researcher at the University Of Washington School Of Public Health. The researcher, Dr. Stephen Bezruchka, a senior lecturer in global health, says the decline comes despite increased U.S. spending on health care services.

In a published study titled “The Hurrider I Go the Behinder I Get: The Deteriorating International Ranking of U.S. Health Status,” Bezruchka looked at statistics on Infant and child mortality, maternal mortality, life expectancy at birth and at age 50, and adult mortality as mortality measures that reflect health over the course of one’s life, comparing them across developed countries. This study offers a succinct summary of its findings as follows:

1. Around 1950, the United States had among the best health outcomes measured by mortality indicators, but 60 years later, it ranked behind the other rich countries and a number of poorer ones.
2. The differences in mortality outcomes between the United States and the healthiest nations today represent substantial inequalities in health.
3. Reasons for this relative decline are likely due to structural changes related to societal determinants of population health stemming from high economic inequality and lack of attention to early life issues.
4. Public awareness of deteriorating health rankings in the United States is limited, so the next steps to improving health require major communication strategies.

Why do you think we have fallen so far behind in health outcomes compared to the rest of the developed world? What can or should we do to change it? Tell us!

This campaign encourages women to call 9-1-1 immediately if they experience one or more of the most common symptoms of heart attack:

• Chest pain or discomfort
• Unusual upper-body discomfort
• Shortness of breath
• Breaking out in a cold sweat
• Unusual or unexplained fatigue (tiredness)
• Light-headedness or sudden dizziness
• Nausea (feeling sick to the stomach)

More information can be found at the Make the Call website, including a quiz, how to survive a heart attack, and information about the myth of the “Hollywood Heart Attack.”

This practice can be applied to the clinical setting as well. When prescribing medication or other treatments, physicians can ask their patients to tell them what they’ve just learned. The Amednews blog gives one example of how to make this happen, as offered by one physician:

“The way I do it is to ask, ‘When you get home tonight, your husband or wife will probably want to know what happened. What are you going to tell him or her about what you and I agreed to in the office today?’ ” Dr. Zeitz says.

“If they can’t tell me what it is they need to do in the format of talking to their spouse, that means they’re not in command of the material, and I haven’t gotten them to successfully understand it. If I see they’re not in command, then I take another crack at it.”

This post goes on to cite data that should give physicians pause before assuming that all patients understand instructions received:

• Nearly 90% of U.S. adults are less than proficient in reading medical information.
• 3 of 4 of people with limited literacy do not tell their doctors about it.

Are you a physician or clinician who faces these challenges? If so, how do you help patients understand complex information? Tell us about it!

Reference:

O’Reilly, K. B. (2012). amednews: The ABCs of health literacy. March 19, 2012  Retrieved March 20, 2012.

The results suggest that most caregivers seek health information from a variety of resources, including print, non-print media (such as television and radio), family & friends. Because health care professionals are the primary, most-trusted source of information, the authors encourage health care professionals to be mindful of these caregivers’ potential lack of HL skills, as it can be a source for poor communication between these groups.

While the data obtained in this study is helpful, and is based on previous research, the authors’ hard work is presented primarily in text and tables. Comparisons of their findings to previous research are done entirely in text, where perhaps a graph or other visual form would make it clearer and more understandable.

Everyone is welcome!

• Date: Wednesday, February 29, 2012
• Time: Noon – 1:00 p.m.
• Where: Hope Fox Eccles Health Library

The Health Library is located just off the lobby in University Hospital

Interdisciplinary teams of graduate or undergraduate students can win a portion of $18,000 in prize money for creating ”effective, innovative apps that take on the nation’s pressing health issues” utilizing existing DHHS health data to “engage and empower people in ways that lead to better health:”

The Challenge

With an abundance of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) data and other health data available as part of the Health Data Initiative (HDI), students have an unprecedented opportunity to create interactive apps and other tools that engage and empower people in ways that lead to better health. Working in interdisciplinary teams that meld technological skills with health knowledge, the IOM and NAE believe that college students can generate exciting and powerful new products – the next “viral” apps – to improve health for communities and individuals.

To “Go Viral To Improve Health”:

• Identify a health problem in your college’s surrounding community
• Assemble an interdisciplinary student team
• Develop an app using data from the HHS Health Indicators Warehouse and other data sources
• Demonstrate how your solution will engage people in your community to promote action that will improve their health

Details are available at the Institute of Medicine website, and groups wishing to promote this challenge can download and print a flyer.

If you were part of such a team, what would you design? How would you use an app to address a pressing community health problem? Tell us!

Recently, a young Spanish-speaking mother anxiously brought her weeping, 18-month-old daughter to our office. Through a translator, she told me her story. “My baby keeps waking up at night with fevers and ear pain after receiving antibiotics in the emergency room.”

When I looked into the affected ear with my otoscope, I quickly recognized a pinkish liquid, with a sweet familiar scent – Amoxicillin – crusted inside her ear. Used three times a day. Just like the doctor told her, she said.

We delicately corrected her inappropriate use of the drug and explained that she should put it in her child’s mouth instead of her ear (from philly.com).

In addition to doctors, pharmacists can play a crucial role in making sure patients understand what their medications are and how to properly take them. To that end the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has put together a “Pharmacy Health Literacy Center” page on its website. It defines pharmacy health literacy, explains its importance, and provides links to health literacy tools for use in pharmacies. These tools could also be used in the training of pharmacy students in order to increase their awareness of this important issue.

Are you a pharmacist or pharmacy student? What stories can you share about the importance of this aspect of health literacy? What steps do you take to ensure your customers really know and understand how and when to take their medications? Tell us!

The Make the Call. Don’t Miss a Beat. campaign is a national public education campaign that aims to educate, engage, and empower women and their families to learn the seven most common symptoms of a heart attack and encourage them to call 9-1-1 as soon as those symptoms arise.

The campaign, developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office on Women’s Health, encourages women to make the call to 9-1-1 immediately if they experience one or more of the following heart attack symptoms:

• Chest pain, discomfort, pressure, or squeezing
• Shortness of breath
• Nausea
• Light-headedness or sudden dizziness
• Unusual upper body pain or discomfort in one or both arms, back, shoulder, neck, jaw, or upper part of the stomach
• Unusual fatigue
• Breaking out in a cold sweat

For more information on the campaign, visit womenshealth.gov/heartattack.

The best ways to teach are often both the simplest and the most creative. For example, the Kawasaki Disease Foundation of India (KDFI) has created the “KD Info Cube,” a puzzle cube with basic information about Kawasaki Disease, a rare, non-contagious childhood disease that causes inflammation of blood vessels throughout the body. Dr Saji Philip, pediatric cardiologist and secretary general of the foundation, hopes this will provide important health information on this potentially fatal disease.

Do you know of, or use, a non-tech teaching tool for promoting health literacy on a given topic? How successful has it proven to be? Tell us about it!

Healthism differs from other health websites, like webmd.com, because it focuses on quality, not quantity, Ramsey says. All content on the site is reviewed by a medical advisory board to assure credibility, he says. Interactive quizzes help provide personalized information to visitors, who can build up health profiles by registering. Healthism differs from WebMD and similar sites in its intuitive, clean design as well, Ramsey says. “I have an obsession with user-centered design and the user experience.”

The site is visually appealing, with a simple navigation structure and useful tools such as a Target Heart Rate Calculator, Body Fat Calculator, and quizzes to test your “Preventive Health IQ.” To use the site, it requires registering and creating a profile, and you can even connect via Facebook.

Because of the nature of journalism (deadlines and the demand to produce), interviewing and taking the founder of such a website is at his/her word is usually good enough. But to evaluate whether the quality of such a site, it is necessary to dig deeper, and to apply two methods of evaluation: the CRAAP Test and the HON Code.

Developed by the Meriam Library at California State University Chico, the CRAAP test evaluates web content based on its:

• Currency: When was the information published/posted/last updated?
• Relevance: What is the importance of the information given your topic or information need?
• Authority: Who is the author/publisher/sponsor of the information?
• Accuracy: Is the information reliable, truthful, and correct?
• Purpose: Why does this information exist?

The Health on the Net Foundation’s “HON Code Certification” is “an ethical standard aimed at offering quality health information. It demonstrates the intent of a website to publish transparent information. The transparency of the website will improve the usefulness and objectivity of the information and the publishment of correct data.” As discussed in a previous post, it simply means a site will be transparent about its funding sources, privacy and advertising policies, author credentials, site’s sources, etc.

As of this writing, Healthism.com does not have HON Code certification. In addition, the “medical advisory board” mentioned in the VO article is not documented anywhere on the site. The privacy policy, while long, is fairly straightforward, but there is no mention of funding sources. And the few articles I sampled, and calculators I looked at, do not cite their sources for this information. So, with these shortcomings, it appears the best decision is to wait and see if this site improves its transparency and provides sources for its information before adding it as a linked resource on the website of a top-notch academic medical library website, such as the Eccles Library.

Serious journalists who would evaluate such sites would do well to know about these methods of evaluating online resources before interviewing the site’s founder.

Where do you being searching for medical information online — Google, Wikipedia, a medical site? What have you found to be a reliable source of health information online? Tell us about it!

Recent federal policy initiatives, including the Affordable Care Act of 2010, the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy, and the Plain Writing Act of 2010, have brought health literacy to a tipping point—that is, poised to make the transition from the margins to the mainstream.

Much of our health system assumes that every patient we see has strong health literacy skills, and can be strong advocates for themselves. But, as a video in a previous post clearly demonstrated, many ordinary people find the process of understanding and acting correctly on instructions from their providers a difficult challenge. One study cited found that only 12% of U.S. adults have sufficient health literacy skills to understand and effectively utilize health information. This can lead to hospitalization when a patient does not follow prescription instructions correctly, or recognize when their condition is worsening. Healthcare providers and organizations can change their processes and procedures in ways that can make a clear difference:

• Improve providers’ communication skills.
• Simplify and make written materials easier to understand.
• Improve patients’ self-management skills.

This article goes on to illustrate how three recent major policy initiatives are creating an opening to move beyond this cycle of “crisis care:”

• The Affordable Care Act,
• the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy, and
• the Plain Writing Act of 2010

Together, these initiatives are moving the concept and practice of health literacy from the margin to the mainstream.

Stories can be more powerful in communicating critical information than just presenting the facts. And as any parent of a teenager will tell you, teens will listen more to peers than parents. Using teen-created videos to communicate essential health messages is another great idea to promote this aspect of health literacy in young people.

Have you used videos or other forms of storytelling to teach young people about important health issues? Tell us about it!

This is the first in a series of free lectures being presented at the Hope Fox Eccles Health Library at University Hospital.

• What: “The Truth About Carbohydrates”
• Presenter: Kelly Daly-Wolfe, M.S. Nutrition, University of Utah
• When: Thursday, January 26, 2012, 7:00 p.m.
• Where: Hope Fox Eccles Health Library, University Hospital (just off the main lobby), 50 N. Medical Drive, Salt Lake City, UT.

Questions? Contact Erica Lake, Associate Director, at 801-581-4685, email:

The H.F.E. Health Library is a service of the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library offering “patients and visitors a place to find health information and research assistance in a welcoming and comfortable environment” (from the website). Visits are encouraged!

Fortunately for the newspaper’s readers, the journalist goes on to include a response from Geni Alexander, public information officer for the Columbia/Boone County Department of Public Health and Human Services, who said, “We would be very careful basing” programs “strictly off that study” because it makes the case for technology that TeleVox sells. The article goes on to cite other quality resources that support some of the study’s findings while not endorsing the TeleVox healthcare product line, which includes automated messaging systems, website hosting, and other tools “not just stay in touch but actually engage their patients while saving money in the process” (from the company website).

Health sciences libraries are in the business of helping patrons find evidence-based health and medical information. Here at Eccles Library, we can point you to quality information resources — websites, journals and more — on everything from health statistics, to personal/consumer health, to sites that address rumors and hoaxes on the Web. Got a question? Just ask!

“nearly 90 percent of people would prefer to discuss blood test results during a doctor’s visit, only about 40 percent have discussed their results in person, primarily because the results were either mailed or emailed to the patient or the patient never received the results. In addition, some respondents reported that providers told them to assume everything was okay if the doctor did not notify them about the results.”

As a result, Ortho Clinical Diagnostics and the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors have launched a “Know Your Numbers” Educational Campaign in Conjunction with National Health Literacy Month. These two groups

“convened representatives from government, business, healthcare professional groups and consumer advocates to examine the state of the nation’s health literacy regarding blood tests. The result of this effort, “Fundamentals to Wellness and Prevention: A Call to Action,” is a report that encourages business, healthcare and government leaders to work together to help consumers become more aware of the importance of blood tests, facilitate timely access to test results and help consumers understand their blood test “numbers” so they can translate the knowledge into action.”

One would hope that these groups would also include librarians from public and health libraries, who are also “consumer advocates” that can put such important medical information before the public quickly, easily and for free.

Do you understand the information from your blood tests? Did you have the opportunity to discuss the results with a physician, or were you told that the doctor would call if there was a problem? Tell us about it!

While this quiz appears to be well-researched and informative, is it from an organization committed to providing reliable health information on the Web? Looking at HealthEd’s website, none of the people listed on its “Leadership” page have an M.D. or medical Ph.D. degree (at the time of this writing).

Information literacy includes having the skills to evaluate online information to determine its accuracy, relevance, source, etc. One way to do this is to apply the C.R.A.A.P. Test: try to determine the information’s:

• Currency: timeliness of the information.
• Relevance: importance of the information for your needs.
• Authority: source of the information.
• Accuracy: reliability, truthfulness, and correctness of the informational content.
• Purpose: reason the information exists.

One way to sort through the tsunami of health information is to look for the HONcode logo (at left). The Health on the Net Foundation “was founded to encourage the dissemination of quality health information for patients and professionals and the general public, and to facilitate access to the latest and most relevant medical data through the use of the internet. The HONcode certification is an ethical standard aimed at offering quality health information. It demonstrates the intent of a website to publish transparent information. The transparency of the website will improve the usefulness and objectivity of the information and the publishment of correct data.”

Other sites that can provide reliable health information include MedlinePlus, major academic medical institutions, and other trusted sources.

What reliable online resources for medical information do you use? Tell us about it!

“5,000 doctors at your fingertips”­– with no waiting room, no copay, anytime, anywhere – for free! It lets people get answers to any health question from thousands of America’s best doctors, at home or on the go, and gives doctors a Virtual Practice, where they answer real patient questions in real time, helping build their reputation, attract new patients and improve the quality of care.

What’s in it for doctors participating in this network? iMedicalApps points out that physicians

participate on HealthTap to better serve existing patients and connect with potential new patients, all whilst demonstrating their expertise and commitment to helping people everywhere. In addition, they can build a social media presence – something many current physicians struggle with, yet is going to be increasingly important to building and maintaining patient panels.

What about the issue of liability? The terms of service clearly state:

While HealthTap Medical Experts do not practice medicine on or through HealthTap, they can be a resource for reliable, relevant general health information.

And:

HealthTap is not a doctor and the use of HealthTap does not create a doctor-patient relationship. HealthTap contains content, and may help you identify services or may offer services. Everything on the Site, including Content accessed or Services provided through HealthTap, are for your information, and should be used for informational purposes only. This means that Content and Services are not a substitute for medical advice from your physician (from the Terms of Use page).

While the concept is appealing, it remains to be seen if HealthTap Express will meet its lofty goals. If physicians want to “build a social media presence,” it is not clear how this app will interact with Facebook, Google+ and other social media sites. And will physicians remain available 24/7 on an ongoing basis without clear financial compensation?

Healthcare consumers (i.e. patients) would do better to bookmark the mobile version of MedlinePlus, and use it to search for information on their condition first, in order to be more fully informed when speaking to a medical professional.

Are you a patient or physician who has tried HealthTap Express? What are your experiences with this app & service? Tell us!

1. Insist on plain language.
2. Focus on absolute risk.
3. Visualize your risk.
4. Consider risk as a frequency rather than as percentages.
5. Focus on the additional risk.
6. The order of information matters.
7. Write it down.
8. Don’t get hung up on averages.
9. Less may be more.
10. Consider your risk over time.

The study revealed that many people overestimate the health literacy of the average health care consumer. Many linked intelligence to health literacy, suggesting people who overdosed on acetaminophen were “stupid” and deserved the outcome.

This is reflective of a wider practice in society: blaming the victim. If something bad happens to someone, they probably deserved it. Our culture, politicians, mainstream media, and even our justice system characterize the unemployed as “lazy,” victims of rape having “asked for it,” and so on. This absolves us of any group responsibility for the troubles that plague our society.

While the results of this study are not surprising, it is important advice to heed: no one wants to change their behavior after being blamed or looked-down upon. If public health campaigns want to improve health outcomes and reduce the costs to our healthcare system, it would be wise to choose positive language.

• Six preconference workshops: build your skills for communicating about health—in person, on the Web, and in print.
• Learn from today’s decision makers and experts.
• Two full days of speakers, panels, and skill-building workshops, plus time to meet with colleagues.

Key topics are listed as:

• Oral communication
• eHealth Literacy
• Usability

To a librarian in an academic medical library, this sounded like a great resource for its intended audience: “physicians, nurses, health education specialists, and public health professionals.” The agenda covers areas such as social media, writing for the web, translation/interpretation, financial literacy, graphic design, accessibility, communicating with seniors, medicaid and health IT, and military programs. It features leaders in these fields lecturing and providing pre-conference workshops on all of these areas.

But no librarians.

While it is important and laudable to help health professionals improve how they communicate information to patients and the public, it is just as important to teach patients how to find and understand this information on their own. At the very least, this event should have invited someone from the National Library of Medicine to talk about MedlinePlus and MedlinePlus Connect, and how they can be used to provide important information to patients and clients.

The program will begin in the spring semester after a newly-formed advisory committee spends six months planning what will best benefit students to learn. Once it begins, most, if not all, of their classes will include subject-relevant information they need to know about access to low cost health care, disease prevention, health insurance and more.

If successful, this will have a cost-saving benefit: it may reduce trips to the emergency room. Typically, those who cannot afford to see a physician wait until an illness or other medical condition has become so severe that they seek emergency care. With knowledge of how to find low-cost health care, fewer trips to the ER should be the result.

Having worked in public education, the number one complaint of students I’ve listened to say school is “boring,” which is usually translated as “not relevant to my life and experience.” Imagine the possibilities if a student has a family member or friend who faces a health  issue, and this student can help ameliorate the situation. If this program proves successful, it could serve as a model for other school districts around the country. And it might, just might, help reduce the rate at which healthcare costs are increasing, at least in this area. Good luck, Harrison High School!

The U.S. government’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Ad Council have teamed up to launch a national health campaign aimed at empowering Latinos to ask their doctors questions.

Television, radio, print and Web ads in $30 million worth of donated advertising space will run in Latino-centric media showing people with ailments such as a bad back getting conflicting advice in places such as the laundromat and the barbershop before going to the doctor (from Fox News Latino).

The campaign is called Conoce las Preguntas (Know the Questions), and the advertisements direct viewers to the campaign’s website, which provides a kind of “roadmap” to a doctor’s visit. For example, it encourages patients to be clear on prescription instructions, and offers suggested follow-up questions to medical diagnoses. And it includes humorous videos such as this one showing  one Latino man asking for advice on an earache, and getting a variety of answers. (Click on the triangle-shaped “play” button to show the video.)

Video Credit: REVOLUCIÓN

Here are a few examples of what’s being discussed (tweeted about) on health literacy (#healthliteracy) on Twitter:

• The non-profit organization Health Literacy Missouri (@HealthLitMO) just published a paper titled “Health Literacy Essential to Successful Implementation of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs)” bySusan Kendig, JD, MSN and Arthur Culbert, PhD. The paper points out that our current health system’s incentives for health care organizations “rewards volume and intensity of services, resulting in fragmentation and higher costs with little attention to value.” It goes on to document how health literacy is directly related to health outcomes.
• @apdolan has sought the thoughts and input of others on how the new Google+ might be used for health activism for an upcoming blog posting.
• @alixefloyd cheered and linked to an article in the NY Times about how more medical schools are screening their applicants for people skills.
• @ACUnderserved publicized information about a “Health Literacy Innovators Award Contest” sponsored by Health Literacy Innovations, a privately held company that “creates tools to help eliminate medical mistakes and confusion due to low health literacy.”

At first, even this author was skeptical of Twitter. But when one can sample what is of current interest on any given topic instantly, it becomes clear the value this platform has.

What topics do you follow on Twitter? If you have used it for research or to take the pulse of people on a particular subject, how helpful have you found it to be? Tell us!

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has launched a “National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy,”  which seeks “to engage organizations, professionals, policymakers, communities, individuals, and families in a linked, multisector effort to improve health literacy.”

The Eccles Health Sciences Library and the Health Literacy Interest Group are offering two webinars on this topic this spring, one on health literacy itself, and the second on the National Action Plan. Here are the details:

Health Literacy in the Real World: Awareness, Ideas, Solutions

• When: March 17, 2011
• Time: 10:00 – 11:00 a.m.
• Where: HSEB 4100 B & C
• Info: Poor health literacy is a major issue in the United States. We see examples of how it affects patients, providers, and the healthcare system every day. This session will look at some of the problems created by poor health literacy, discuss programs and ideas to help improve it on both the patient and provider side, and review some solutions. The upcoming IHA Health Literacy Conference will be reviewed, as well as a discussion of the National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy.

National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy

• When: May 4, 2011
• Time: 1:00 – 2:30 p.m.
• Where: HSEB  4100 B & C
• Info: The Institute for Healthcare Advancement is hosting its 10th Annual Health Literacy Conference: “Health Literacy = Effective Communication: Translating Ideas Into Practice” May 4-6, 2011 in Irvine, California. You can attend a pre-conference session “virtually” to discuss the National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy. Join in the social media discussion and hear how other organizations around the country are using the National Action Plan, and join the discussion with information about what you’re doing or suggestions for others.

Both webinars are FREE, and faculty, staff and students are welcome to attend.

Reference:
¹U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 2000. Healthy People 2010. 2nd ed. With Understanding and Improving Health and Objectives for Improving Health. 2 vols. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

The day began with a keynote address by Kenneth D. Mandl, M.D., M.P.H., an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Intelligent Health Laboratory at the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program in Boston Massachusetts. Dr. Mandl’s talk on “Patients at the Center of an Innovation Platform: Personally Controlled Health Records and the App Store for Health” focused on what creating an effective personal health record system should look, and how it could enhance the learning side of our healthcare system.

Following a break for food and discussion, the group returned to the George and Dolores Eccles Institute of Human Genetics Auditorium for a “Meet the Experts” panel discussion on the topics raised by Dr. Mandl. Panelists included representatives from corporate, Veterans Affairs, healthcare providers, informatics and patient-centered perspectives.

Following the panel discussions, participants were treated to an online presentation of the new MedlinePlus Connect from Sarena Burgess, M.S., Librarian, Health Information Products Unit, of the National Library of Medicine.  This free service “allows any electronic health record (EHR) system to easily link users to MedlinePlus, an authoritative up-to-date health information resource for patients, families and health care providers. MedlinePlus provides information about conditions and disorders, medications, and health and wellness” (from website).

Wrapping up the event the Library provided a light lunch in the atrium of the Health Sciences and Education Building next door. Participants and visitors alike were treated to finger foods while they perused information tables provided by various vendors, including two companies specializing in personal health records services.

What does this mean for libraries in general and medical libraries specifically? Tell us what you think!

Authors of the final report noted that “92% of participants felt their expectations of greater knowledge of religious diversity, and how to incorporate this knowledge into their workplace experiences were met or exceeded.” A Google search using the title “Crossing the Religious Divide: training caregivers in religious diversity” was the only way this author was able to find the report, but it can be read in Google Docs.

This project took place in the Omaha, NE area. How would a similar project in the Salt Lake City area do? Tell us!

• A Videos & Cool Tools page that makes multimedia content easier to find and searchable.
• A Share button on all health topic pages and interactive tutorials that allows you to share links to MedlinePlus through your favorite social networks. See the Diabetic Diet topic page as an example.
• A medical dictionary search box on the English homepage for quick look-up of medical terms.
• A search cloud widget on the homepage, and a widgets page where you can find options for embedding MedlinePlus content in your own blogs, personalized homepages, and other sites.

Thanks to Siobhan Champ-Blackwell, Community Outreach Liaison at Creighton University Health Sciences Library, for the information!