Co-sponsored by the Tufts Center for Global Health http://publichealth.tufts.edu/cgph and the Health Literacy Leadership Institute http://go.tufts.edu/summerinstitute, the Global Health Literacy Forum is designed for researchers and practitioners interested in sharing ideas for future direction in global health literacy and communication. Clear Language Group Member Sabrina Kurtz-Rossi is Director of the Health Literacy Leadership Institute at Tufts.
Clear Language Group Member Sabrina Kurtz-Rossi presents workshop on Heath Literacy and Cultural Competency Tools and Techniques read at 5th Annual Maine Minority Health Conference for Advancing Health Equity in Maine Through Community Health Workers. Read the twitter feed @kurtzRossi #mechw.
Clear Language Group Member Lorena Sprager presents poster session at Familias en Acción’s Latino Health Equity Conference called Achieving Cultural Competency and Health Literacy through Developing Original Materials for and with Spanish Speaking Mexican Immigrants. http://www.familiasenaccion.org/latino-health-equity-conference/agenda-and-workshops.html
CLG sponsored the Center for Plain Language ClearMark Awards for the third consecutive year. The Awards Ceremony took place at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on Tuesday, May 12, 2015. The ClearMark Awards honor the best in plain language websites and print materials. For the first time, Spanish-language materials were included in the awards. Wendy Mettger attended the ClearMark Awards representing CLG.
Clear Language Group Members Sabrina Kurtz-Rossi and Lorena Sprager present at the Wisconsin Health Literacy Summit http://wisconsinliteracy.org/health-literacy/training-conferences/health-literacy-summit.html. Sabrina presents Pre-Summit Session on Writing and Designing Effective Communication http://wisconsinliteracy.org/health-literacy/training-conferences/pre-summit-sessions.html. Lorena presents poster session, Achieving Cultural Competency and Health Literacy through Developing Original Materials for and with Spanish Speaking Mexican Immigrants.
Sabrina Kurtz-Rossi of the Clear Language Group and Rob Logan co-author IOM Health Literacy Roundtable Discussion Paper on Why We Need a Health Literacy Association http://www.iom.edu/global/perspectives/2015/health-literacy-association.aspx
Sabrina Kurtz-Rossi, member of the Clear Language Group, presents Pediatric Grand Rounds at Tufts Medical Center https://www.tuftsmedicalcenter.org/ to kick off quality improvement project Harnessing Efforts to Address Health Literacy and Enhance Relationships and Services (HEALERS) at the Floating Hospital for Children.
Wendy Mettger, in collaboration with Joanne Gallivan and Catherine Brown, presented “Using Plain Language to Make Diabetes Messages Clear and Simple: The National Diabetes Education Program (NDEP) as a Case Study.” The diabetes educators were actively engaged in the presentation and later reported their satisfaction at having engaging and easy to read and understand materials from NDEP.”
Audrey Riffenburgh and Sabrina Kurtz-Rossi are co-authors of the new resource, Building Health Literate Organizations: A Guidebook to Achieving Organizational Change. Health literacy is fundamental to improving patient safety, quality, and equity. Healthcare organizations need to make system-wide, sustainable changes to help patients learn and use health literacy skills. The book provides a flexible framework for organizations who want to become health literate.
Audrey Riffenburgh, Senior Health Literacy Specialist at UNM Hospitals, was honored with the 2014 Distinguished Healthcare Team Member award in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion where the health literacy initiative Audrey leads is based.
Audrey’s health literacy work focuses on guiding UNM Hospitals toward becoming a more health literate organization. The organization recently made a leap toward that goal when the leadership approved a position against testing patients’ health literacy (or functional literacy) skills in a clinical setting.
Lorena Sprager conducted a workshop called Advocating for Latino Patients: an Integrated and Grassroots Approach on March 28. She shared tools to make an institutional commitment to Latino patient advocacy as well as strategies to bring Latino community members to the table to advocate for themselves. In addition, Lorena shared a closing plenary on health literacy, focusing on language access in the health care setting.
Lorena Sprager co-presented a workshop called Community Health Worker (CHW) Grassroots Efforts: Expanding Workforce Borders on February 26. Presenters shared about the history and expanding roles of CHWs in the Oregon region of the Mid Columbia Gorge. They also had participants explore possible ways to expand CHW roles in their own community reality. Participants gave the session high scores.