Gathering Welcome: Creating a Curriculum to Teach Health Literacy to Immigrant and Refugee 92

Margaret Zimmerman, an Assistant Professor with the University of Iowas UI School of Library and Information Science SLIS requests a grant for a second iteration of her pilot program to develop and implement a health literacy training for immigrant and refugee 92 living in Johnson and Linn counties in Iowa. This grant will build upon Dr. Zimmermans current successful project employing SLIS graduate students to deliver a health literacy course to immigrant and refugee 92. Based upon the findings of the current pilot, Dr. Zimmerman will develop a formal, more extensive curriculum with the assistance of a graduate student in curriculum development from the College of Education. Dr. Zimmerman will utilize collaborators from the Obermann Center Public Engagement Working Group, of which she is co-director, and from the School of Public Health. The new curriculum will be tested through delivery to the target population by SLIS students, encouraging them to understand the challenges of meeting the needs of traditionally underserved individuals and promoting the NLMs consumer health information resources. The result of this project will be a cohesive, vetted curriculum designed to improve the health literacy and health information access and outcomes of immigrants and refugees. This outcome supports the mission of the NNLM by improving a traditionally underserved communitys access to information, and therefore enabling them to make informed decisions about their health. Similarly, it supports the aims of the GMR by providing access to quality health information for consumers, and developing and implementing an outreach and education program that focuses on an underserved health community. This project will also assist with the aim of improving GMR consumers understanding of quality health information resources available online so to aid in medical decision-making. This resultant educational intervention has the potential to improve the health literacy and address the health informational needs of refugee 92 and their families. While the immediate impact will be on refugee 92 participating in the pilot program, this project is meant to create replicable programming for other community organizations and has the additional benefit of engaging SLIS students with traditionally underserved communities using NLM resources.