Health Literacy Curriculum with Assessment

Submitted by Annie Schmidt on Thu, 09/05/2013 - 15:23
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I am the Health Literacy Coordinator at the Florida Literacy Coalition. We host the Florida Health Literacy Initiative in partnership with Florida Blue. Part of the initiative includes a pre and post assessment to gauge an increase in health literacy among students. Our grantees predomenantly use Staying Healthy because it is comprehensive and comes with a pre/post test, but a few grantees work with different levels of ESOL students and are interested in using a book better suited for lower and higher levels. 

Are there any books that you would recommend that either come with an assessment or something you created that works well? It would be great to continue this discussion on here, but if you'd prefer to email me with files my email is schmidta@floridaliteracy.org. 

 

Information on the Florida Health Literacy Initiative and Staying Healthy- http://floridaliteracy.org/literacy_resources__teacher_tutor__health_literacy.html

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There is a similar resource book caled "What to Do When Your Child is Sick?" (I believe it was a model for the development of Staying Healthy!) This book, developed by the Institute for Healthcare Advancement (IHA),  is part of a series of "What to Do for Health" books. These books are written at a 3-5 grade level and have been used in adult literacy programs and health programs.

There was a project through Health Literacy Kansas, which evaluated the use of this book in training parents, although it was not done in an adult literacy program setting. But there are likely to be some literacy programs out there who have used this and may have developed an assessment.

For more info about the Health Literacy Kansas Project:

http://www.enewsbuilder.net/kafp/e_article002329750.cfm?x=b11,0,w

For info about the "What to Do For Health" series:

http://www.iha4health.org/

 

I have just started a small grant funded project called the QUEST(Quest to Understand and Educate Seniors Today) project.  It will take place in Johnson Co Kansas.  We are working with Landon Center for Aging at KU Med. Ctr.

We will be studying how seniors learn using the book What to do for Senior Health, which is also produced by IHA.

We are doing a pre/post test with the curriculm.

I will keep you posted on how we are doing.  I am very excited.

Thanks for the email and responses. I am familiar with the "What to do" series. We're looking for something that could work for a general population. Not everyone who we work with has children or takes care of seniors. 

Check out this one:

Expecting the Best

http://www.cls.utk.edu/docs/Expect%20theBest-Instructor'sManual.pdf

It has been tested, but the results are not available online. You could try to get the write-up from the authors.

You can read a description here, but use the link above to get to the curriculum:

http://lincs.ed.gov/professional-development/resource-collections/profile-345

 

Julie,  Thanks for pointing educators and others to the Expecting the Best curriculum!  We evaluated ETB and presented the results at the annual APHA meeting in 2007. A summary of our findings is available here: https://apha.confex.com/apha/135am/techprogram/paper_155130.htm  

For anyone interested in the curriculum, the following link connects to both the instructor plans and students lessons:

http://www.cls.utk.edu/expectthebest.html

The materials have been used among Robert Wood Johnson grantees and are listed as a resource in the CDC's National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy.  Also...please note that I took down the ETB website about two months ago - and after the fact realized that the site has been embedded in many other sites!  So expectingthebest.org no longer points to this project or curriculum - it's been claimed by a new user.  That said, the materials are freely available at the link above and I'd be happy to answer any questions!  -Sandy

 

 

Basically health literacy programs are quite beneficial for human being as it deliver better assessment to understand the importance of health and hazards; therefore in most of the regions we have found that different health care centers are liable to pay their best efforts to deal with health education problems; under health education programs we have found different kind of chances to learn more about health care system. Here in Florida we have found the same concepts were applying to make people aware about the importance of health care through health literacy programs.

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