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Yes, I did promise this. Here goes –I need help! I am looking for people to help on a blog project. Since we do not have a National Health Literacy Day, maybe we shouldsupport Helen Osborne and her health literacy month of October. I amnot concerned if we call it health literacy month or healthcareliteracy month. Both seem applicable and appropriate. Maybe therecould be a World Health Literacy Day within the month of October.
In addition, since this is December2012 and we have until October 2013 (actually September 2013) to gettopics ready and pick a few topics for the month for blogs. Forpeople in the Diabetes Online Community (DOC), we will want toemphasize diabetes literacy. Now for the more complicated part, ifyou like this, I could use help contacting other people with chronicdiseases to bring them into this, and expand this to all bloggersthroughout the world. This is how important I feel this could be. In addition, people could blog in their own language. This wouldmake this usable to more people as not everyone reads English.
Each disease could have their part tocontribute to health literacy month. No, I am not suggesting a blogevery day, but maybe one blog per week on some facet of healthliteracy. This would mean approximately four blogs from each bloggerfor the month. Picking the different topics within health literacyis also an area I will accept help as I am not the most organizedwhen it comes to this.
I had hoped to have correspondence fromHelen Osborne by now, but I have heard that she will not be availableuntil late December. I am hoping for some answers and guidance atthis time. I will still put some of my ideas out to see if there issupport for any of this.
A few of the topics that I have thoughtabout include:1. Working with knowledgeable doctors in each disease to havecommunity meetings to discuss terms common to a disease and give themeaning in terms everyone can understand. Even if this were only inthe month of October would be a good start.2. Find community organizations that exist and have them put on ameeting and invite a doctor specializing in that disease. Example: There is an organization that meets monthly in my community onParkinson's disease. 3. Contact town or city officials and find out if there are anygroups they are aware of that are meeting some of the needs of peoplewith literacy problems. Literacy problems will also be healthliteracy problems.4. Contact the local YM or YWCA (if your community has one) and seeif they work with literacy problems.5. Consider establishing a health literacy group and recruitingpeople to assist people that are willing to accept assistance whenmeeting with doctors, so that you may explain things to them thatthey may not understand.6. Study literacy and health literacy discussions on the Internet. Example: The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) sitehas some useful information available and is one of 12 agencies underthe Health and Human Services (HHS) department that works forimproving healthcare. They do publish an excellent brochure aboutsafe medicine use. I picked up my copy at my local pharmacy. Thereare other websites and some excellent blogs about health literacy.
I am open to most any suggestion eitherin the comments area or by email – see my profile page. Anothersource of information is this website.
Helen Osborne has several otherwebsites and this is one of them. The Institute of Medicine has anexcellent article on health literacy and I have written about some ofthe topics that health literacy can have an effect on patients, hereand here.
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