Health literacy colleagues,
I would like to call your attention to a new, short paper that makes a compelling case for including adult basic skills in community health advocacy and supporting community health centers and adult basic education programs to work together. It has been published by the Open Door Collective, a group of researchers and practitioners, of which I am a member, dedicated to reshaping U.S. society to have dramatically less poverty and economic inequality and more civic engagement and participation in all that our society has to offer. Why Healthy Communities Need Adult Basic Skills Education, was written by a team that I convened of health researchers, practitioners and health literacy advocates, Open Door Collective members Ian Bennett, MD, PhD, University of Washington Seattle; Iris Feinberg, PhD, Georgia State University; Marcia Hohn, EdD, Independent Consultant; Ellen Kersten, PhD, University of California San Francisco; and Maricel G. Santos, EdD, San Francisco State University.
We would be interested to hear your thoughts about the paper, and hope you will share it widely with health public policy advocates who may find it helpful. We also welcome your questions about, and interest in, the Open Door Collective.
David J. Rosen
Djrosen123@gmail.com
Comments
Hi David:
Thanks for sharing this. I'm sure members of the community will have comments as we get a chance to read and digest the team's paper. Do you want to say a bit more about the Open Door Collective?
Cynthia Zafft
Health Literacy Moderator
Hi Cynthia and others,
The Open Door Collective is a group of adult basic skills researchers and practitioners, and increasingly people in other domains such as health, immigration issues, workforce development, intergenerational literacy issues, corrections justice issues, and others, all of whom are concerned about reduction of poverty and income inequality in the United States. It is an organized volunteer group, not an organization. It holds quarterly national membership phone meetings; it has also formed task forces in the domains described above, and in others, to develop short papers to "make the case" for including adult basic skills in other policy advocacy work, for example in the areas of health, labor issues, immigration issues, etc. The idea is to help advocates in areas that are stakeholders in adult basic skills, but would not necessarily describe themselves as adult basic skills practitioners, to make adult basic skills part of their national, state and local advocacy agendas, and if it is already is included in the advocacy agenda, to raise its priority.
David J. Rosen
djrosen123@gmail.com
Dear Colleagues:
If you would like to hear more specific details for your area, David has provided his personal email address (although you are more than welcome to continue the discussion here, too).
Cynthia