Patricia W Martin
Taubman Medical Library
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI

The National Library of Medicine through the GMR awarded an 18 month health disparities subcontract to the University of Michigan Health Sciences Libraries for their proposal Michigan Health Literacy Awareness Training Program. HSL is partnering with Washtenaw Literacy, a county-based literacy training effort, to raise awareness among area health professionals of the issue of low literacy and poor health literacy among their patients, and to provide communication techniques and resources to improve patient care.

Staffs of the HSL and Washtenaw Literacy (WL) held their first health clinic session on June 18. The session was held at the Ypsilanti Health Center, which is affiliated with the University of Michigan Medical System. Over the two hour session, the WL staff followed their sensitivity training curriculum and offered a great many solutions for working with clients. The HSL librarian shared the scope of resources for low basic and ESL clients from the MedlinePlus site. Feedback from clinic staff of seventeen was very favorable and will inform the future sessions being planned for other health care settings.

This project has been funded in whole or in part with federal funds from the National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health under Contract # NO1-LM-6-3503

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