Health Online: Finding Information You Can Trust Phase II

Health Online: Finding Information You Can Trust will continue to help persons from underrepresented populations better access, identify, and use reliable health information on the internet. With todays focus on obtaining information online or going mobile, there is a digital divide for many individuals with low health literacy and represented among vulnerable populations, using online and other digital tools for health Pew, 2015. Through this project, Wisconsin Health Literacy WHL will offer an additional 25 digital health literacy workshops for consumers most at risk for low health literacy, especially targeting refugees, immigrants, indigenous peoples, LGBT communities and those with low literacy. WHL uses a proven workshop model which relies on partnership with local organizations to reach vulnerable populations through educational programs offered in trusted settings. WHL will leverage its past experience conducting 32 collaborative Health Online workshops and 4 Health Online training sessions to improve educational content and expand service delivery in new communities across Wisconsin. Community partners are scattered across the state and will include non-profit literacy councils, 75 of which are members of Wisconsin Literacy. Additional historic partners include public libraries, Indian tribes, refugee and immigrant service organizations, 89, and community health centers. In phase one, we spent time developing materials and reached out primarily through library partners. In this phase, we will insure more targeted delivery by developing new relationships between local libraries and targeted vulnerable populations such as LGBT communities, refugees, immigrants, and indigenous nations see letters of support and note that additional letters are still coming in from partners and will be shared. A lesson learned from phase one was that there is an increased demand for this type of training for librarians. A second project component involves providing 10 train-the-trainer workshops for librarians, who work with vulnerable populations, on how to effectively help persons with low health literacy find trustworthy health information. This will enhance sustainability and assist librarians to feel more confident in helping all library customers seeking health information, especially those who have lower health literacy and less online expertise.