Library Director RowanSOM Health Sciences Library Stratford, New Jersey
Objectives: The NJ AHEC (Area Health Education Center) Scholars Program is a longitudinal, interdisciplinary program for students of the health professions that provides training activities for their future work in underserved areas, including health information literacy. A large proportion of information on television, phones, and computers is advertising, unlikely to account for the health concerns of any individual patient seeing a health professional. Health Information Literacy combines the health literacy competence of understanding of what is health information, with the qualitative information literacy evaluation of sources of health information. Can future health professionals become a source of consumer health information?
Methods: The Health Sciences Library applied to the Regional Medical Library for Region 1 for research grant support to provide health information literacy group instruction and Medline Plus materials to two cohorts of AHEC Scholar students for the 2020-2021 academic year. A pre and post anonymous survey about health information access and understanding was also distributed by email to the students. During the training, three important unbiased sources of current health information were featured: MedlinePlus, The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, and Health on the Net. Following two training sessions, a packet of locally designed and printed MedlinePlus laminated pocket cards and bilingual Spanish and English flyers were mailed to each student. The Library created a LibGuide which shared both sources of health information literacy and the master copies all of the NLM and locally developed materials.
Results: The RML grant funds supported the production and mail distribution of the MedlinePlus material in an attractive pocket folder. The virtual training sessions were received favorably, particularly in the use of a game-based review of concepts. The results of the survey showed positive regard for the training but quantitatively did not meet statistical significance.
Conclusions: The LibGuide continues to distribute the concepts and learning materials, which could easily be adapted for any audience of students or general public. The Game is hosted at Kahoot.com and can be presented in a group context. The Fall 2021 new cohort of AHEC Scholar students also received the health information literacy lecture and game. The NJ AHEC Scholars program maintains a record of their student participants, and a follow up survey about providing accurate consumer health information could be a future research activity.
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