Health Literacy Challenges and Opportunities: Bringing Children's Mercy and Kansas City Together

On April 18-19, 2018, Children's Mercy Kansas City (CM) hosted an immersive, inter-professional workshop designed to educate participants on health literacy, improve the delivery of health information to healthcare consumers, and foster collaborative opportunities.

Keep checking back as we continue to add workshop content. Soon the Image Gallery will be filling up with photos of the events.

Day One of the 2-day workshop was open to the Kansas City community, with over 25 healthcare, literacy, public health, public library and other related organizations invited to send representatives to join Children's Mercy personnel. A total of 73 people attended the event held at the Helzberg Auditorium of the Kansas City Public Library Central Branch. Dr. Ruth Parker of Emory University was the keynote speaker, accompanied by local speakers on literacy in the Kansas City context, the social determinants of health, and the impact of cultural, religious, language, numeracy and digital access factors. Additionally, large and small group activities provided attendees with opportunities to meet and interact with each other.

Day Two, held in the CM Professional Office Building Conference Room (3rd floor), was designed to engage CM employees for whom the application of health literacy practices in patient care is a vital responsibility. These included quality care coordinators, unit and allied health educators, library staff, and Health Literacy and Patient Education Committee members among many others. A total of 60 people attended. Their additional training was supplemented by interactive, hands-on practice sessions and brainstorming exercises intended to develop and initiate internal hospital-supported health literacy pilot projects. A set of SMART goals were created and teams of hospital employees will be encouraged to carry those goals forward, including opportunities to reach back out to the previous day's external participants to create community-wide health literacy initiatives.

This two-day event was sponsored by Children's Mercy Library Services and Health Literacy Committee with funding from the National Networks of Libraries of Medicine MidContinental Region.