Conference Agenda
18th Annual Health Literacy Conference
- May 1
- May 2
- May 3
Wednesday, May 1st
Preconference Sessions
This year the preconference sessions are grouped into categories. Participants can choose to remain in a specific track or switch between tracks and attend any Introductory or Spotlight Session.
Introductory Sessions
All professionals relatively new to health literacy may be particularly interested in these sessions. They are designed to introduce important components of health literacy.
Plain Language Makes Plain Sense
9:00 am - 10:30 am
Teresa Wagner, DrPH, MS, CPH, RD/LD, CHWI
University of North Texas Health Science Center Institute for Patient Safety
Plain language makes it easier for everyone to understand and use health information. Although plain language is a good idea, many healthcare providers and organizations don’t use it all the time. This workshop will help you plan and act to improve plain language use to empower your organization with accurate, accessible and actionable health information. Participants receive plain language principals that are easy to understand and apply. Then, hands-on group work puts you through the act of revising a document. It was highly acclaimed at the Texas Health Literacy Conference and achieved State Certification for Community Health Worker continuing education.
Everything I Need to Know (About Health Literacy), I Learned in Kindergarten
10:30 am - 12:00 pm
Ellie Foster, MPH, CHWC
Kayla Sargent, MPH
MaineHealth
Join an experiential learning session using best practice methods to connect and engage with patients for better health outcomes. Attendees will learn and practice five strategies for improved communication and patient experience. This workshop will teach participants the basics of health literacy. By the time they leave, participants will feel like they've had these skills since kindergarten. This interactive session is for anyone who interacts with patients and families in person or in writing. Participants will rotate through kindergarten-inspired activity stations with hands-on activities packed with information. Participants will apply best practice strategies for making health information accessible for patients.
Lunch (On Your Own)
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Designing for Health Literacy
1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
Megan Pugmire
Oregon Health & Science University
Graphic designers, educators, and others responsible for everyday development and design must consider more than just plain language In order to create clear, memorable, and relevant patient materials. Taught by an art director embedded in an academic medical center, this session focuses on using design principles, learning theory, storytelling, and user-based participation in order to create the best content possible for health care audiences. Attendees will learn from clear before-and-after examples drawn specifically from health care settings.
The Health Literacy Environment- A Hands-On Experience
1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
Rima Rudd, ScDL
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Diana Gonzalez, MPH, CHES
Institute for Healthcare Advancement
Health Literacy 101 - An Introduction to the Field
6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Michael Villaire, MSLM
Institute for Healthcare Advancement
This workshop will provide an overview of the scope of low health literacy, including frequencies among the general population, general characteristics, abilities and challenges of persons with low health literacy, and the cost of poor health literacy (both in terms of human suffering and dollars). Strategies for making individual and system-based improvements to improve health communication will be discussed.
Newcomer Reception - Meet and chat with longtime health literacy experts in an informal setting.
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Spotlight Sessions
Each year the spotlight will be on innovative developments in health literacy. This year the spotlight is on digital innovation and patient engagement.
Building Health Literate Care Through Meaningful Patient Engagement
9:00 am - 12:00 pm
Farrah Schwartz, MA
Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, UHN
Kerseri Scane, R.Kin, MSc
University Health Network
This session will review the importance of engaging patients in planning health literacy initiatives and resources. During the session, we will review methods to engage patients and practice using engagement tools.
Adding Video Education to Your Patient Education Efforts
9:00 am - 11:00 am
Leah Elsmore, MPH
Brittany Walter, RN, BSN, CPN
Children’s Hospital Colorado
Adding Video Education to Your Patient Education Efforts
The Health Literacy Program at Children’s Hospital Colorado has launched an in-house video education program to enhance the patient and family education experience. Video education is a best-practice that addresses many challenges frequently encountered in healthcare, including linguistic diversity, low literacy, acuity of patient conditions, and shorter lengths of stay. It has been shown to improve retention over paper-based education. This session will walk through the patient education video development process from start to finish, how to determine if a topic will translate well to a video format, and will train participants on basic script development skills.
Lunch (On Your Own)
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Creating a Whiteboard Video
2:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Gary Ashwal, MA
Booster Shot Media
Stacey Dickert, MA
RiverHouse Creative
This hands-on workshop will introduce attendees to writing and production strategies for creating whiteboard animations. The workshop will be oriented around guiding attendees through a full production process of actually creating t heir own videos from writing through editing! Two important features of the whiteboard style are simple visual metaphors and plain-language narration. The focus on visuals makes the style a useful tool for teaching patients with low literacy skills or limited English proficiency. Attendees will watch and discuss examples of whiteboard videos for patient education, and they will learn tips and strategies for writing and producing their own videos.
Paid Sessions
Teach-back: Making it an Always Event
8:00 am - 12:00 pm
Mary Ann Abrams, MD, MPH
Nationwide Children’s Hospital
This interactive 4 hour workshop will use the "Always Use Teach-back!" Toolkit as a
foundation to strategize and create an implementat ion plan for making teach-back an "always event" throughout your organization.
$99.00
Creating Health Forms That People Can Understand: Strategies for Clearly Explaining Legal Requirements and Addressing Organizational Barriers
9:00 am - 4:00 pm
Jann Keenan, Ed.S.
Janet Ohene-Frempong, MS
Institute for Healthcare Advancement
Christopher Trudeau, JD
University of Arkansas for Medical Science, Center for Health Literacy
Are the health forms at your organization clear and understandable? Chances are, they aren’t as clear as your patient education material. Yet we know that people struggle to understand forms, applications, and all sorts of legal documents. Spend the day with three of our experts and learn many tips and tricks that you can use to improve the forms in your organization.
By the end of the workshop, you will be learn to:
- understand the fundamentals of creating clear, effective health documents and forms,
- navigate the legal rules that govern how courts interpret legal documents, and
- develop strategies to better advance health literacy initiatives in your organization.
$199.00
Thusday, May 2nd
Morning
Registration
6:00 am - 5:00 pm
Breakfast
7:00 am - 8:00 am
Welcome / Conference Overview
8:00 am - 8:20 am
Michael Villaire, MSLM
Institute for Healthcare Advancement
Opening Keynote
8:20 am - 9:30 am
Plenary
9:30 am - 10:30 am
Networking Refreshment Break
10:30 am - 10:45 am
Breakout Sessions
*This year the breakout sessions are categorized by content domains established by the Job Analysis Task Force to describe competencies of a Health Literacy Specialist.
Cultural Humility and Facing Difficult Conversations
Kristin Martinez, MS, LMFT
PAX Therapy and Family Services, Inc.
This breakaway focuses on the role of privilege in systems. It brings into play the power of the provider, and the importance of cultural humility in joining with our clients and standing with them rather than for them. This session also aims to build practical skills in talking about difficult topics like race, money, religion, sexuality, etc. This session is discussion rich, and pushes the bounds of personal comfort for the sake of better outcomes, and more just service implementation.
Data, Design, and Technology: Infographic Strategies for Health Communication
CommunicateHealth
Learning Health Literacy through Service Learning
University of North Texas Health Science Center Institute for Patient Safety
Lessons from the Yeti: Unpacking the Learnability of Risk Perception
San Francisco State University
Margaret Handley, PhD, MPH
University of California, San Francisco
Afternoon
Luncheon - IHA Health Literacy Awards / Listserv and International Activities Overview
12:30 pm - 1:45 pm
Plenary
2:00 pm - 2:55 pm
Networking Refreshment Break
2:55 pm - 3:15 pm
Breakout Sessions (Morning sessions repeat in same rooms.)
3:15 pm - 4:45 pm
Free Time / Poster Presenters Set Up
4:45 pm - 6:00 pm
Poster Session / Opening Night Reception / Exhibits
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Friday, May 3rd
Morning
Registration
7:00 am - 3:00 pm
Breakfast
7:00 am - 7:50 am
Plenary
8:00 am - 8:55 pm
Breakout Sessions
*This year the breakout sessions are categorized by content domains established by the Job Analysis Task Force to describe competencies of a Health Literacy Specialist.
Patients candid thoughts are worth more than pennies: benefits and insights of the Think-Aloud Method to Develop Patient Resources
9:00 am - 10:30 am
Geri Lynn Baumblatt, MA
Articulations Consulting
Elizabeth Wick, MD
University of California San Francisco
* This is a Public Health domain course.
It’s often challenging to figure out what concepts confuse patients, how to clarify them, and how to address emotional components. One-on-one interviews using the think-aloud method let us get inside people’s thoughts to identify points of confusion and important insights as we make edits. We developed patient education booklets for surgical pathways implementation “toolkits” across several service lines. Interviews using the think-aloud method helped us identify problematic passages, iterate, and re-test them. Hear about the challenges and benefits of the approach, best practices, and qualitative data as these booklets are utilized at hospitals. Then it’s your turn to try it.
Will they actually use it? Teaching Effectively to Ensure Action on Healthcare Information
9:00 am - 10:30 am
Bonnie Ronan, MN, RN
*This is an Education domain course.
An important part of health literacy is actually using information that has been taught. How can we ensure that what we teach is acted on appropriately? Teach-back and principles of adult learning are important in making sure information is understood, but don’t guarantee the learner will actually use it. For healthcare education to be truly effective, it must be acted on. As with any skill, teaching effectively requires practice. In this interactive session participants will learn and apply practical strategies for both teaching and ensuring action on healthcare information.
A Community Based Initiative to Promote Health Literacy Among Individuals with Serious Mental Illness
9:00 am - 10:30 am
Lisa Razzano, PhD, CPRP
University of Illinois, Chicago
Nicole Pashka, MS, CRC, CPRP, LCPC
Thresholds
*This is a Community Engagement domain course.
This session summarizes factors in health literacy relevant to individuals with serious mental illnesses, including major depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. In particular, individuals with serious mental illnesses experience disparate rates of chronic physical illnesses including cardiovascular, respiratory, metabolic, and infectious diseases. Presenters will review and discuss a major community-based health literacy initiative specifically aimed to address chronic physical health conditions among those with psychiatric illnesses, results of a longitudinal survey, including self-management and other health practices, and methods to implement and sustain these services within integrated community mental health settings. Strategies to improve workforce competencies also will be described.
How to effectively incorporate health literacy PDSA Cycles into Becoming Health Literate Organizations Across A Network of Provider Types
9:00 am - 10:30 am
Celina Ramsey
John Mastellone
Kristin Mouton
Staten Island Performing Provider Systems
*This is an Organizational Systems and Policies domain course.
PDSA cycles measuring organizational effectiveness of Health Literacy tools can be used for quality improvement initiatives across a variety of types of health care service providers. This session would share program implementation, activities and results of a PPS network using tools 1-5, 11, 12, 14, and 16 from AHRQ's Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit. Upon Analysis of HEDIS performance measures and CGCAHPS survey results we have seen outcomes trending positively for Medicaid beneficiaries and the uninsured since the start of our Health Literacy initiative in 2016.
Afternoon
Closing Plenary
10:30 am - 11:00 am
Michael Villaire, MSLM
Institute for Healthcare Advancement
Rima Rudd, ScD
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health