Stan and Clarence chat with Dr. Genelle Lamont about health literacy.Dr. Lamont, currently serves as Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Biobehavioral Health at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine, Duluth Campus. Dr. Lamont's research interests focus on the intersection between chronic disease, social determinants of health, and Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias in indigenous populations. She also focuses on health equity, health literacy, cultural humility, and establishing meaningful and accessible health data on American Indians/Alaska Natives using community-based participatory research and building public health surveillance capacity to address native health.Listen along as Dr. Lamont shares her expansive knowledge about the importance of health literacy. Join the conversation at healthchatterpodcast.comBrought to you in support of Hue-MAN, who is Creating Healthy Communities through Innovative Partnerships. More about their work can be found at http://huemanpartnership.org/
Hello everybody out in Health Chatter land. Welcome to Health Chatter and our show today will be on health literacy, which is actually when we think about all the shows we've done, there's probably a health literacy component to all of them, but we'll really get into the logistics of all of that with our great guest who I'll introduce in a moment.
We have a great, wonderful ass crew behind the scenes that helps us with all our shows, Maddy Levine-Wolfe, Aaron Collins, Deandra Howard do our background research for all our shows that gives both Clarence and I some information that makes us sound smart. So thank you to you guys. Matthew Campbell is our production manager, makes sure that our shows get out to you, the listening audience.
And Sheridan Nygaard, is also one of our researchers, but she also helps us with marketing. So thank you to all of you. You're second to none. My co-host, partner in crime, Clarence Jones. Wow. This has been a ride. Great colleague. We love doing this show. We really, really do. And hopefully we're getting some useful information out to you, our audience. Also, I'd like to thank
Human Partnership, a community health organization that's involved with community endeavors for, frankly, for all of us. You can see their information. You can visit their website at humanpartnership.org. With that, let's get going on health literacy. Today, we've got a great guest with us, Janelle Lamont, who... We worked together all the years at the Minnesota Department of Health.
And it was ironic. I remember it well when we were thinking about all the different community oriented initiatives that we were involved with all of our grants. And it just dawned on us. I don't know how, but, you know, hopefully it was a smart decision that, you know, we should really address health literacy when we're dealing with all these great communities that we're dealing with at the time.
And so we did, we really got going on health literacy, and made sure that our, our staff knew about it, we wrote our grants with a health literacy lens, etc. And we could not have done that at all, really, without the help of our guest today, Janelle Lamont. Since then,
Yeah, since being at the health department, she is now an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Biobehavioral Health at the University of Minnesota in Duluth, up in northern Minnesota. She got her doctorate in occupational health research and policy and a master's in public health and environmental health, all from the University of Minnesota, primary research
involves investigating the intersection between chronic disease and related risk factors such as Alzheimer's disease and dementia. But she has an illustrious background dealing with health literacy. She trained many people when she was involved at the dental health program at the Minnesota Department of Health and training dental health professionals.
And also led a lot of conferences, led actually a lot of trainings, even for us, the staff. And then it really jumped from there. I remember it jumped from there where you became really involved nationally in the issue of health literacy. And so thank you. Thank you so much for being on Health Chatter today. So let's get this going. You know, to a certain extent, health literacy is like a duh.
I mean, shouldn't we all be kind of health literate when we're dealing with our health? But we all deal with it at different levels. So maybe we can start out with defining what health literacy is.
really is i'm sensing maybe incorrectly that health literacy is perhaps different for all of us but taken away to know what it what is health literacy well first of all i just wanted to thank you um for inviting me to come to this podcast um we have known each other for several years now and i really appreciate this podcast and the work that you're doing so thank you thank you so to
Simply to find health literacy, it's one's ability to find or obtain health information, be able to use and comprehend it, and to be able to then apply that to your own health or for your family or your community's health. But one of the things that people frequently forget too is it's not just your own personal health literacy, but it's also the health literacy of providers and organizations.
So on the provider level, it's how well can that individual clearly communicate to their patients so that they understand their health information when they walk out that door.
And at an organizational level, it's how that organization incorporates health literacy best practices so that they're training their providers, that their providers are consistently communicating in plain language in a way that people can understand. And it's just fostering that environment of health literacy and patient education.
You know, I remember distinctly, you know, it's like it's almost like every profession has their own language. You think of the medical profession, you think of the public health profession, you think of the legal profession. And it's like all of a sudden when somebody out in the community needs to link one way or the other with that profession, it's like there's a sense of being lost.
It's like, where do we start?
Clarence. You know, Giselle, thank you for that definition. As you were talking, as we were thinking about this particular topic, it seems as though health, the term health literacy is something of a new conversation. And I'm wondering when did it become important for people to become more aware about their knowledge about health? So for example, I am a, what am I, Generation X?
No, whatever I'm just saying. I'm old, okay, okay. A baby boomer. Yeah, that's what I was. Okay, you know, I forget. Okay, okay, well, baby boomer. You know, I didn't need health literacy as much as talking to my doctor. My doctor would tell me everything, right? And I am wondering if you could just talk about that transition period.
why it is now important for more people to know and be more literate around their health. Am I making sense?
Yeah, so actually health literacy is not a new concept. I think maybe it's something that people are becoming more aware of, but it actually dates back to the late 80s, early 1990s. And it all started with the work of C.C. and Leonard Doak, who actually were health... educators, educators in K through 12 education, as well as part of the US Public Health Corps.
So it dates back to our public health roots. And so they had done a bunch of research, which I believe is now archived in the National Libraries of Medicine, where they kind of looked up these different concepts of looking at concepts of literacy. So we have in literacy, we have what are called prose document and quantitative literacy.
So basically we probably all understand literacy as our ability to read and comprehend information, but it's much more than that. So prose literacy is basically our ability to read and understand continuous texts. So something that might be in, for example, some type of medical instructions. And then document literacy is particularly around reading and comprehending forms.
So if you think of those big, large medical history forms, for example, or even something like a prescription drug label. And then quantitative literacy is just that looking and understanding, reading and understanding numbers. So are you able to calculate a serving size for your favorite breakfast cereal? Or are you able to
properly dose yourself with your medication or over-the-counter medication, right? And so literacy, health literacy is part of that literacy, just in the context of the healthcare field, which I just described some examples of that. So it's something that I believe people struggle with all the time, according to the 2003 National Adult Assessment of Literacy, which looked at literacy, but also
different domains of health literacy. So looking at, again, literacy, quantitative, which we're calling numeracy, and then looking at digital problem solving skills. And what they found with that study is really only one in 10 Americans have proficient levels of health literacy to be able to properly attend to their own health care, the health care of their family members.
And 36% of those in that study really struggle with health information. Part of that could be because of overall reading levels, but there are certainly other factors involved in that as well. And it's not necessarily a situation around your level of education. Certainly those with higher levels of education would be presumed to have higher levels of health literacy.
But again, we can't always assume that. Again, going back to the fact that medical jargon and language that we learn stems from those that are within, say, public health fields or medical fields, the fields in which you are learning those terminologies. But everyone else obviously didn't go to those schools. So how would you then expect them to understand the language that you use, right?
I think everybody, once we're born and when we go through K through 12 education, we automatically speak plainly. It's only when we go to graduate school and professional school that we kind of forget all that we learned. And we start to be more technical because that's the expectation of these schools, right? Is that you can speak in that way and you can speak with your colleagues.
But equally important would be if we also went back to our roots and learned how to speak in plain language and adopting health literacy best practices so that we can apply that when we're speaking with the public, when we're speaking with our patients or clients.
That was excellent, because I think you're absolutely right. It is this whole idea about health literacy. People are talking in plain language, and many people think that when we talk about medical things that it has to be somewhat complex, but it doesn't have to be, does it?
Correct. Correct. And actually back in 2010, you might recall that was the passage of the Affordable Care Act and the Plain Writing Act in which government agencies were required to provide documents in plain language and speak in plain language. So there was a movement around 2010 and that's when we had the national plan to address health literacy that was enacted through the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services. So during that time, there's a lot more awareness around the need for health literacy and to implement that into the different professions. But since then, there hasn't been any real major movement towards advancing health literacy in a major way.
And I really believe that in that context, we need to be addressing health literacy from a systems-wide approach, tackling education sector, health and human services sectors, etc.,
So let me ask a couple of things here. First and foremost is how do we know when someone is health literate?
That's a really good question. So there's a handful of tools out there that we could actually use to test someone's health literacy. The problem with those tools is that I guess to use an epidemiology term, cross-sectional, right? You understand what that means? So it's one point in time that we're capturing data.
So if you were to take maybe an average over a year, you'd get a better sense of somebody's health literacy. But if you're just capturing it at that one point in time, it's really contextual. It's going to depend on your stress levels for that day, right?
in the context of a healthcare visit, it might depend on, have you just received a major diagnosis that say you've have cancer or some kind of inoperable, you know, and so then your, your cognition and your processing goes down when those kinds of incidences happen. So really the best practice in health literacy is to, instead of focusing on the individual and bringing their health literacy up,
is to then focus on the provider and making sure that the provider is communicating clearly and speaking in plain language.
You know, so you bring up, actually, that's one of the questions I had, you know, when you, when anyone is, is faced with a, um, an acute event, okay. An emergency. Okay. Like, um, Or you're diagnosed, like you just said, like with a major illness like cancer or whatever.
It's like for any of us, frankly, even those of us who are trained in these fields, it's like all of a sudden it puts you in this kind of a tizzy where it's like, okay, how in the heck do I find out about this cancer or what have you? And in a way that I can act. I really can move forward with information that I truly understand.
And the point that you bring up is the immediacy of the situation can put people, increase stress levels, et cetera, and affect their ability to understand. So the point of bringing it back to the provider, I think is really important. a good, good point. Okay.
Go ahead. I was going to say, you know, it's really interesting. You mentioned 2010. I talked about the fact that it was not necessarily common language. I'm a community member. Okay, Janelle. So I'm a community member. I'm just talking about for me. All right. And my community perspective, and I worked in a health clinic
And so the whole idea about health literacy was, you know, you hear things like, well, you know, you need to talk to your doctor. And that was the extent of, I guess, health literacy, you know, being able to talk to your doctor versus teaching people how to actually look for our resources or how to actually, you know, examine or look at what the diseases were.
Or ask the questions.
Or ask questions. I mean, you know, it was like, you know, your doctor knew everything. But, you know, ask Mr. Google or Wikipedia, you know. But I mean, I think that what you're saying is that there is a much more effective way of us becoming more literate. And that's one of the things that we need to be talking about for people to be able to take a look at.
So in our shows, you can imagine we've dealt with a lot of disease entities, et cetera. And we usually kind of thematically think about prevention, treatment, Disease management. Okay. So let's talk about or get your input on health literacy from a prevention standpoint. All these things that we're trying to prevent. Okay.
Help me to get my head around the idea of health literacy with all these messages that we put out around prevention.
Right. That's a good question. So again, I'm kind of looking at things from a systems level approach.
Yeah.
So if we were to invest money into having health literacy as a core component of the K through 12 health education curricula, and we made that mandatory for every state, how that would look in terms of prevention is that students would come out of high school, understanding more about how the healthcare system works, how to learn more about their health insurance, where to go for that.
When is it appropriate to go to the emergency room versus schedule a regular medical appointment? They would know generally more about anatomy, physiology, and generally how systems work. So when they have pain somewhere, they would know precisely how to describe that pain and the location of the pain so that they can better communicate with their doctor.
Yeah. You know, it's interesting. There are certain things. that are required for students when they graduate. Like in the state of Minnesota, you're required to know CPR, cardiopulmonary resuscitate. This would be a nice add on to that law. Imagine that, how is it that we could help increasing health literacy with some of the ideas that you were talking about? What about for us,
older people, you know, and prevention. It's like, you know, we're barraged with all these health messages on what we should do prevention wise. But many of us don't might not understand it. So how do we deal with with an older population?
Right. And I think, again, from folks that are working in public health and some of these advocacy roles to be able to advocate for older adults. And to empower them to ask questions of their healthcare provider that at the end of the visit, at the very least, they should be able to answer the questions of what is my main problem?
Why is it important for me to do the instructions that you're asking me to do? And what are some self-healthcare tips that I can bring up, right? That's part of it. Another often overlooked resource are librarians. health librarians in particular can help older adults or anyone in general to access health information sources that are vetted rather than having somebody just do a Google search.
And maybe you might come up with some good information, but oftentimes you won't.
So, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's interesting that, that, I mean, it's kind of logical, but it's kind of like, we all need to be reminded of a simple resource as a library to get some good information. Go ahead, Clarence.
Yeah, I was going to ask Janelle, and it's kind of in line with what I was going to ask. Can you give us a story of a community that maybe, you know, that worked on this issue and some of the results from it? I mean, so that people understand how somebody else took a look at health literacy and how they worked with it to improve the health of the community. Do you have a story for us?
I have to think of one. So the Minnesota Health Literacy Partnership, I am currently the interim chair for that. The founder and chair, Alicia Odeombo, unfortunately passed away this past year. But she did a whole lot of work. She was part of a quality improvement unit at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota and
So she and a colleague were the ones that actually formed the Minnesota Health Literacy Partnership. And early on, that was part of their work was to work with librarians to provide information more widely to the public. They also developed a toolkit actually specifically for older adults and caregivers on how to better improve their health literacy, where to find resources that are vetted.
Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So, so here's, you said that, you know, this whole thing of health literacy, the theme of health literacy really kind of went off in the 80s, 90s, etc. I can't.
the problems that are associated with poor health literacy in our illustrious research group listed in here, like we're seeing more hospitalizations, greater use of emergency care, decreased use in preventive services, poor health status, higher mortality, higher health costs, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, now my question is, was that still a problem?
before health literacy became, you know, before we started studying it. It seems to me that these issues have been around with us for a while, but maybe one of the major ways to address them is through being more health literate.
Correct. I'm sure that this has been an ongoing problem. It was until recently, since the 90s and forward that there were actually studies in place that looked at these different issues and did find that folks that have lower levels of health literacy, you know, had greater use of the emergency room department, more hospitalizations and readmissions, less preventive care such as vaccinations.
So certainly part of it, as I had mentioned, is if we can incorporate that health literacy into health education curricula early on during K through 12, But for now, I think the focus should be around making organizations more health literate and also providing that education and training for providers.
Now, I can tell you right now, at least in Minnesota, the patient education departments and a lot of the healthcare systems are usually manned by just a handful of employees. And that is their job specifically to develop and write health education materials that are in plain language and are health literate and provide that to patients. But another part of their role is provider training.
But because they're such a small group and once you get out and you're past that medical education, you don't have a lot of time to spend on training, even if continuing education credits are provided. So again, another systems level approach would be if we could provide health literacy as a standard part of medical and professional school education.
But with that said, if we can do a better job to make opportunities for those that are currently working in the field to get that training, I think the better off we'll be and to encourage them to consistently use those skills that they acquire during their training. So one
important piece of that, not only teaching folks how to go back to the basics and use plain language instead of their medical jargon, another powerful tool, but yet a real simple one is called the teach back or the show me method. So that's when you're all done with your visit.
And let's say you've shown someone, for example, how to use their inhaler at the end of that visit, you want to say to that patient, Okay, I just want to do a double check and make sure that I've explained things as clearly as I could. Could you show me when you go home how you're going to use that inhaler? And then the patient will then show you exactly how they would use that inhaler.
And that way, if they're not doing it right, you can make the correction then. And that way you would be certain that when that patient goes home, they're going to be using their medication correctly or they'll be able to follow your instructions. to it to you?
You know, it seems to me that, you know, what you're referring to is really a partnership in order to accomplish health literacy. Yes, it falls on any one of us individually, but also the healthcare providers together. So, and not being afraid of
not coming across as a patient that you might feel like you're stupid because you didn't, why would I ask this question type of thing, as opposed to saying, it's okay. It's okay to ask the question. Better to ask the question to be safe and correct in your treatment, for instance, than not. So, I mean, I think that's, so I'll give a perfect illustration of this. So,
Our listening audience knows, if you've heard, I take care of orthopedic patients after they've had knee surgery. I go in and say, hey, listen, I've had it myself, so I'm here to provide you some insight on how to recover. And it's really interesting, the comments that I often get. I love, like one patient will say, I love just hearing normal language.
Just normal, and I appreciate that greatly, as opposed to the medical ease that they hear when, you know, in getting their knee replaced, okay? So it kind of takes, to a certain extent, it takes the stress down for them. And imagine if you take the stress down for them, they heal, they recover quicker. So it does work, Clarence.
So, Janelle, how much does health illiteracy cost us? You know, I don't know, has there ever been a cost for the, you know, the lack of our populations being literate? How much extra does it cost us? I was looking at the report that our researchers did. They said 36% of us 36% of us are at basic or below basic level of health literacy. And I'm thinking it's got to cost money.
And I have to believe that organizations know that it costs money for people to be illiterate, you know. And I'm just wondering how much does it cost and knowing that, you know, The color of America is green. Why hasn't there been much more of a focus on this whole issue around health literacy?
Correct. Yeah, that's a great question. So unfortunately, there's only been real small numbers of studies that have been done in health economics to look at the association between folks having lower health literacy or the system not addressing health literacy for those folks, and then the resulting healthcare costs.
One study that gets cited often, Vernon 2007, which has been updated for more recent numbers, suggests as high as $938 billion in waste is spent because of unnecessary hospitalizations. not going in for prevention and all the other issues that we've already discussed.
Yeah.
But certainly more money needs to be put into research on health literacy so we can get more precise estimates.
So let's talk about a recent event that's near and dear to everybody. And that's COVID. Okay. So How? I mean, just maybe an assessment, you know, from from maybe your your perspective, Janelle is how did lack of health literacy affect us when we were all going through COVID? What did you see or perceive?
Again, it would be great to have some studies to support this. I think there's a lot of studies around miscommunication, purposeful miscommunication around COVID. But again, because health literacy is not routinely taught in K through 12 education, then folks come out with different backgrounds. And again, we did see this during COVID.
So we had some folks that maybe had higher levels of health literacy who understood in general how vaccines work, how they're helpful. Um, and so those were the folks that went in and got vaccinated right away. They were the ones that knew how to properly wear masks and did that to protect themselves and their family members.
And then you saw the other folks, um, that unfortunately maybe got a lot of their misinformation through Google. It became highly politicized as well. Um, Framed as more of us versus them. We, you know, we're, we're more independent. We don't need to listen to, you know, these ivory tower folks on how to protect us ourselves, or, Hey, this isn't even a hoax.
So we had those folks that were refusing to mask didn't go in for vaccinations and a result as a result of that they probably. were more likely to get infected and unfortunately spread COVID to other folks, including those that are vulnerable.
And that's why we saw situations where, you know, folks that were working in these critical care units would encounter patients literally on their desk bed, needing to be hooked up to the ventilation saying, I'll take my vaccine now. And they had to say, I'm sorry, but That's not an option at this point.
Yeah, yeah. You know, it's interesting, even for people who are highly educated or professional or, I mean, when you're dealt with, something like COVID, it puts us in a high stress situation. And again, that affects our ability to interpret communications properly. And it became problematic because the professionals
quickly and efficiently and effectively needed to understand it in order to communicate to their patients. So it put us in a little bit of a quandary there for a while, but it certainly is an indication of why we all need to put up the balance a little bit on health literacy for all of us so that we're not as stressed out when we're faced with those types of things.
Go ahead, Clarence. Yeah, I loved it when you said purposeful miscommunication. I think that's what you said, right? That struck me, you know, that with all the things that are going on, we actually have people that are purposely miscommunicating around a lot of our diseases. And so how does one, how can we really help ourselves to be more
aware, informed around these, around these issues where there's so much purposeful miscommunication around these various diseases. And COVID was a great one. And, you know, we were fighting people and people were sneezing on folk and, you know, all kinds of crazy stuff, you know, and, and it was interesting. So yes.
Yeah. I almost wonder too, now that you brought that up, if, if all of us as health professionals, when we were communicating with the public did speak more plainly, right. And it, and clearly that maybe this wouldn't have been as big of an issue. Cause again, um, one interesting story I have is one of my pastimes as screenwriting. And when I was taking some screenwriting classes in St.
Paul, um, my sister and I were taking it together and we were writing, um, a science fiction story about scientists. And so our dialogue obviously reflected that. And one of the other students in the class said, wow, you know, you really captured the pomposity of that character. And my sister and me looked at each other and we're like, wow, you know, that's how we're coming across.
A scientist like this is just how we normally talk with each other. So we certainly weren't trying to perpetuate portray that we were pompous or anything with that character. But that's what other people are hearing, right? That there's almost this anti-education attitude with some folks or jealousy. And so if you're speaking at that higher level and
you know, you don't really show empathy or compassion, then you are kind of coming across right as big pompous elitist. And then that can go. Obviously, that's going to go against you when you are trying to communicate something of a serious nature and you want people to trust you and believe in what you're saying.
I always talk about sometimes people use language because they are afraid of losing their soul. You know, they're afraid they're going to lose something by them speaking plain language. And I'm like, you don't know how much more effective you are by speaking language and being able to be bi-directional in terms of conversation.
But a lot of people, you know, you talked about that graduate level plus. A lot of people feel like if I talk normal, I shouldn't say what normal is, but if I talk plainly, that somehow I'm not, I'm de-elevated. So, but I think around health is so important for us to be able to talk plainly and talk clearly and to help people to understand.
I mean, because I think that we might be saying the same thing, but we're just using different languages. I mean, and so if we really want to help people to be healthier, we need to be able to understand how to be more bi-directional.
Let me ask you, there's a couple- There's been studies done, too, that show that everybody appreciates queer communication regardless of their health literacy or the education level. Again, you know, somebody might understand those higher-level words or medical jargon, but that does take some more processing, right? And it's just easier if you just speak plainly for everyone. Mm-hmm.
You know, one of the things that we talked about in a previous show was this whole issue of trust. And it seems to me, and maybe you can reflect on this a little bit, you know, that if you have a trusted relationship with your primary care provider, that almost by itself embraces being more health conscious.
literate because you have a sense of communicating better or you aren't as nervous, for instance, communicating. The reason I bring that up is in this day and age, especially when people are constantly changing health plans, for instance, and they're forced to change providers, for instance,
um that trust then is compromised and and i'm guessing i'm maybe hypothesizing here that health literacy is also compromised because now you're talking to someone else who you've never talked to before and all of a sudden you got to break through that barrier in order to get your your needs met health-wise does that ring true at all yeah i i think
That definitely could. Again, that just goes back to the need of why we need to be incorporating health literacy into medical and professional school education, in addition to just general good communication skills, right?
Yeah.
It's tough when you're seeing patients, what, only five to 10 minutes at best at a time. And so it's really kind of hard to build that trust and relationship with that patient. But if you come in already having those skill sets of, you
relaying sympathy being open and asking questions of that patient and then using that plain language and following up your visit with the teach back or show back or teach back or show me technique then I think even even if you do have to change providers you know unfortunately that can be a loss for patients again because they already have that pre-existing relationship with that other provider but at least if we're
systematically providing this training to medical providers and other professionals, then they can at least have these skills to then to develop their own relationship with that patient.
So, you know, the other day I went to the dentist, I had to have a crown replaced, not fun. Okay. But my dentist and his, his assistant, his, I noticed were really, really good. They were probably trained by you, Janelle. But they were really good because throughout the whole thing, they were explaining
Literally, every little step that they were doing, you know, with the impressions and the taking this out, putting this in and, you know, they whatever, whatever it happened to be, step by step, they were just saying, okay, Stan, this is what we're doing now. Okay.
And it was, it's just comforting knowing that, you know, when you're sitting back in the chair there with your mouth, your mouth wide open, at least you're, you're hearing what's going on and you feel more confident that way.
Right. Exactly.
Okay. Go ahead Janelle.
Oh, I was just going to say, yeah, for dental providers, that is a best practice is if you're doing a procedure that you're explaining each and every step, because as you say, it's, quite intimidating. You're laying back in a chair, right? People shoving things in your mouth and right.
And it can be, you know, really scary for some folks, but if you are, you know, you have that calm voice and you're explaining each step and giving that patient a break, then that helps to calm those eases and makes the procedure go a lot smoother. Yeah.
I mean, I, my dentist even says, Stan, sorry for the drill sound.
Yeah.
You know, which, okay, at least I know that there's going to be one now, you know. Exactly.
Yeah, Clarence, go ahead. So Janelle, since 36% of us are at basic or below health literacy levels, could you give us some tips on how to increase our health literacy?
That's a good question. So I think if there's educational opportunities out there, and again, As I mentioned before, your librarian can be one of your best friends at getting that health information. But just in terms of being able to go to your clinic appointments and navigate that as best you can, one of the good practices that I always tell folks to do is bring a buddy if you can.
If you have a trusted friend or family member that can come with you to that visit that can help calm some of your eases, but also if there's things that you don't hear the first time or you forget, then that buddy of yours can help you to get that same information or might have additional questions that you hadn't thought of.
If that's not possible, if you can bring a notepad and a pencil or pen to your appointment and just make sure that you are writing things down. And if something isn't clear, you can just, you know, Don't feel ashamed. Just ask your doctor, say, hey, you mentioned this term or this, and I didn't go to medical school. I don't know what this means. Can you explain this in plain language to me?
And just make sure that you don't leave that office visit until you have your questions fully answered or make sure that you know what to do when you're out of that medical appointment. Maybe ask for some follow-up.
instructions that you can take with you usually they have aftercare summaries that they can print out for you you know I could just see in a doctor's office or in a dental office you know a simple sign that says it's okay to ask just it really it's okay to ask or it's okay to clarify you know That kind of brings it down to say, hey, yeah, okay, thanks.
You know, because I might need some things to be clarified here a little bit.
I would be amazed to walk into a doctor's office and see that. I mean, I think that's a great idea.
Me too.
Yeah, like it's a good-ass question. Yeah. Yeah.
The other thing that I think compromises health literacy is the time allotment that physicians are given in order to see a particular patient or a dentist or whoever, a provider, a health provider. That really puts an angst in the whole thing, I think. And maybe going forward, that type of thing can be addressed.
Mm-hmm.
Better than it is now. So Janelle, I know you've given us some really great food for thought, but if there may be one or two things that you want to make sure our listening audience is left with today, what would it be?
Great question. So if there's providers or healthcare organizations or even public health organizations that are listening on the call. Again, to just recognize that health literacy is very important to patient or consumer health education. Even if you're thinking about things like communicating data or charts, that's still a form of health education, correct? And if you want your end user to
your patient, your client, that healthcare consumer, to take your information and be able to actually use it and make sense of it, then you need to be incorporating these health literacy best practices. One way to get that education and get it free is through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's health literacy website.
You go through something called CDC Train, and there's several modules there for different types of providers, including public health educators. I highly recommend those trainings. They'll teach you the basics about health literacy. They'll explain how you can incorporate that into health education materials, how to make data and reports more understandable.
And there's also other great tools on that website too, like the 10 attributes of a health literate organization.
A lot of folks have successfully used that as a tool to create an assessment for your organization where you can look through each of those 10 attributes and see where your strengths lie and where there are some places that maybe you need to draw more attention to, such as workforce training, right?
Well, I'll tell you, it seems to me that, like I said previously, this whole concept of health literacy is really a two-way street. Yeah. We each individually need to own it. Professionals need to own it. And in many ways, we need to all practice as well. Okay. Yeah. It's an ongoing issue. It's been going on for a while. You and I have been involved with it for a while.
And actually, we're hoping that through just health chatting, through our health chatter podcast, we're providing some information out there. clearly, we hope, straightforward, so that people can understand these issues around health clearer.
Yeah, yeah. I think my closing remark is this, is that health literacy is another leg for us to address disparities. And I don't think that we talk about it enough. I mean, you know, you know, people, um, we do this quick conversation, but people need to understand the importance of going deeper and understanding more clearly what's really going on.
And that's going to be one of the ways in which we're going to address these disparities. But we also, who are practitioners need to understand how important it is for us to also be able to help people understand this, this, um, So I want to thank you. I mean, from my perspective, thank you very much. I mean, uh, um, I learned a lot and, uh, I do appreciate it. Yeah.
You're, you're, you're a, you're a real gem when it comes to, um, this whole subject. And, um, And just the way you present it is clear. So that's great. That's great. So thanks for being with us on Health Chatter. For all of you out there, we've got some great shows coming up. Our next show, we were having an actual stroke survivor that will talk to us about...
His care, which frankly, I assume is going to involve some health literacy issues that we talked about today. And then after that show, upcoming shows, we're going to be talking about grief and how it is that another show on motivation. How is it that we get motivated in health and do things that we need to do? How is it that we get there? So with that, thank you. Keep health chatting away.
Hi, everyone. It's Matthew from Behind the Scenes. And I wanted to let everyone know that we have a new website up and running, HelpChatterPodcast.com. You can go on there. You can interact with us. You can communicate with us, send us a message. You can comment on each episode. You can rate us.
And it's just another way for everyone to communicate with Stan and Clarence and all of us at the Help Chatter team. So definitely check it out. Again, that's HelpChatterPodcast.com.