Friends,
I am looking for samples of Health Literacy Bridge programs. How are you preparing students for a career in a healthcare profession? What science skills are you including in your curriculum? What are you doing to help students move from your bridge to an associates degree? I invite you to explore a model healthcare bridge created by a community college in Illinois.
I'm interested in learning more about what you are doing in the field and the sharing of ideas.
Sincerely,
Kathy Tracey
Comments
Thanks for sharing the details of this program, Kathy. There is a good information about the program on its site. One question I have is regarding the Eligibility, Recruitment and Selection. The link leads to a page which says the following:
There will be a selection committee made up of the Bridge to Health Sciences Transition Team and the developmental education program’s Student Services Coordinators. Following recruitment, all interested and academically qualified students will be asked to complete an application. This application will ask the students to identify their transportation and childcare plans and to have an alternate plan for each of these common attendance obstacles. They will also be required to write an essay on why they would like to be considered for this class. The Student Services Coordinators, instructors, and referring agency contacts will be asked in their recommendation document to rate the applicants on a 1 – 5 scale on the following characteristics that could affect their success in the Bridge: attendance, attitude, motivation, persistence, self-discipline, cooperation, participation, and completion of assignments. They will then be asked to give their opinion as to whether or not it would be reasonable to assume that this student could successfully complete the Bridge class. I'm interested in what academic assessments are done, and whether they include a health literacy component? Given the vocabulary and general language requirements of most healthcare careers, a contextualized literacy assessment may be helpful in both selecting candidates, and in measuring gains in learners' literacy over the course of the program. Programs looking for free examples of this kind of assessment should check out the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' page of Health Literacy Measurement Tools. Are you using another tool to evaluate learners' literacy in the context of health and wellness? I am curious to hear more about this aspect of recruitment for these types of bridge programs. Mike Cruse Career Pathways Moderator michaelcruse74@gmail.com