Improving Health Equity Through Health Literacy Education
Health literacy is the ability to understand and use health information. More than one-third of adults living in the United States have limited health literacy, which is associated with adverse health outcomes. Physicians need education about how to communicate effectively across the range of health...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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SLACK Incorporated
2023-04-01
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| Series: | Health Literacy Research and Practice |
| Online Access: | https://journals.healio.com/doi/10.3928/24748307-20230522-01 |
| _version_ | 1797748927182667776 |
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| author | Peggy Nepps Adam Lake Jenna Fox Cindy Martinez Phebe Matsen Kristina Zimmerman |
| author_facet | Peggy Nepps Adam Lake Jenna Fox Cindy Martinez Phebe Matsen Kristina Zimmerman |
| author_sort | Peggy Nepps |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Health literacy is the ability to understand and use health information. More than one-third of adults living in the United States have limited health literacy, which is associated with adverse health outcomes. Physicians need education about how to communicate effectively across the range of health literacy levels, but residency programs often fail to provide it. We aimed to develop and evaluate a curriculum to establish evidence-based recommendations for training family medicine resident physicians to communicate effectively across the range of health literacy levels. We developed and implemented a 6-month curriculum about health literacy and best practices for communication and collected three pre-/post-measures: patient surveys, videos of residents' patient encounters, and resident self-surveys of knowledge, attitudes, and use of communication techniques. Training of 39 residents included conferences, videotape reviews, written feedback, targeted supervision, and environmental cues. All knowledge/attitude questions on the resident survey improved significantly, as did the use of 4 of 6 communication techniques. Video observation also showed significant improvement in the residents' use of three techniques and a decrease in jargon use and an increase in “plain language” explanations of terms. Multimodal interventions improved residents' knowledge and attitudes about health literacy and use of health literacy precautions. [HLRP: Health Literacy Research and Practice. 2023;7(2):e99–e104.] |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-12T16:11:56Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-e452428d38b048b18d1a8f7267f3c174 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2474-8307 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-12T16:11:56Z |
| publishDate | 2023-04-01 |
| publisher | SLACK Incorporated |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Health Literacy Research and Practice |
| spelling | doaj.art-e452428d38b048b18d1a8f7267f3c1742023-08-09T13:37:35ZengSLACK IncorporatedHealth Literacy Research and Practice2474-83072023-04-0172e99e10410.3928/24748307-20230522-01Improving Health Equity Through Health Literacy EducationPeggy NeppsAdam LakeJenna FoxCindy MartinezPhebe MatsenKristina ZimmermanHealth literacy is the ability to understand and use health information. More than one-third of adults living in the United States have limited health literacy, which is associated with adverse health outcomes. Physicians need education about how to communicate effectively across the range of health literacy levels, but residency programs often fail to provide it. We aimed to develop and evaluate a curriculum to establish evidence-based recommendations for training family medicine resident physicians to communicate effectively across the range of health literacy levels. We developed and implemented a 6-month curriculum about health literacy and best practices for communication and collected three pre-/post-measures: patient surveys, videos of residents' patient encounters, and resident self-surveys of knowledge, attitudes, and use of communication techniques. Training of 39 residents included conferences, videotape reviews, written feedback, targeted supervision, and environmental cues. All knowledge/attitude questions on the resident survey improved significantly, as did the use of 4 of 6 communication techniques. Video observation also showed significant improvement in the residents' use of three techniques and a decrease in jargon use and an increase in “plain language” explanations of terms. Multimodal interventions improved residents' knowledge and attitudes about health literacy and use of health literacy precautions. [HLRP: Health Literacy Research and Practice. 2023;7(2):e99–e104.]https://journals.healio.com/doi/10.3928/24748307-20230522-01 |
| spellingShingle | Peggy Nepps Adam Lake Jenna Fox Cindy Martinez Phebe Matsen Kristina Zimmerman Improving Health Equity Through Health Literacy Education Health Literacy Research and Practice |
| title | Improving Health Equity Through Health Literacy Education |
| title_full | Improving Health Equity Through Health Literacy Education |
| title_fullStr | Improving Health Equity Through Health Literacy Education |
| title_full_unstemmed | Improving Health Equity Through Health Literacy Education |
| title_short | Improving Health Equity Through Health Literacy Education |
| title_sort | improving health equity through health literacy education |
| url | https://journals.healio.com/doi/10.3928/24748307-20230522-01 |
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