Health Matters: Educating Library Staff to Respond to Health Literacy Needs in their Communities

This project will support public libraries efforts to address their communities health information needs by presenting a pilot Health Literacy course within Northern Kentucky Universitys NKU Library Informatics LI BS program https://www.nku.edu/academics/informatics/programs/undergraduate/librar…. Project funding will be used for tuition, fees, and textbook allowance for seven students who are currently working in a public library located in a Kentucky Medically Underserved Areas MUA. https://data.hrsa.gov/tools/shortage-area/mua-find. Fifty-four Kentucky areas have been reviewed and designated in the last five years. The LI program is online and accessible to staff members serving communities which are not near a University with a library science program. The course content will aid library staff in building health literacy among their users as defined in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, Title V, the degree to which an individual has the capacity to obtain, communicate, process, and understand basic health information and services to make appropriate health decisions. Specifically, course learning objectives will be focused upon building knowledge of public health resources NLM resources in particular as due to their ready accessibility, development of effective skills for information searching in this field, and awareness of best practices for library programming in consumer health. Utilizing their learning achievements in these areas, students will create a programming action plan to address a specific public health concern. Students will gain awareness of project funding options as the action plan project as it will include the creation of a project proposal for GMR funding. Scholarships will be awarded based upon 1 a description of a specific public health concern which their public library could respond to, 2 confirmation that the applicant student is employed in a public library located in a MUA , and 3 a letter supporting the application from the Library Director or Library Board member if the applicant is the Director. The action plan each of these seven students develops during the course will address the public health concern they identified in their application. All student projects in this course will be made available through NKUs institutional repository and publicized through multiple communication channels.