Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge

The Myra Mahon Patient Resource Center PRC at Weill Cornell Medicine WCM is devoted to providing consumer health information and health literacy services to patients, caregivers, faculty, students, and public neighbors in communities surrounding NewYork Presbyterian Hospital NYPH sites in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Westchester, and the Hudson Valley. PRC staff propose to promote awareness and improved health by developing a consumer health and health literacy-training module for public health librarians in the Brooklyn Public Library System. To reach as many Brooklyn Public Librarians as possible, we plan to conduct two three-hour courses to take place at Brooklyn Public Library locations on March 4, 2020, and April 8, 2020. This project is important as a search of bibliographic literature revealed few studies of the general health consumer populations ability to access and use high-quality data online health information 13. The module will include lectures, small group break-out sessions, audience participation, and a LibGuide outlining consumer health issues and Medicare/Medicaid resources. Additionally we will administer a pre-and post-test survey to participants to gauge effectiveness of the program. The first half of each session of the program will concentrate on the special characteristics of conducting reference interviews with individuals who have health questions. A recent study discussed the importance of face-to-face reference services when discussing health matters 2. The second half of each session will focus on the importance of health literacy and the impact low health literacy has on society 47. After delivery of the training sessions, we will develop an asynchronous, online CE course for medical, public, and other information professionals looking to improve their consumer health and health literacy skills to provide enhanced services to their patrons. We propose to seek CE credit approval for the online course from the Medical Library Association MLA and for it to count toward the Consumer Health Information Specialization CHIS curriculum.