Dao Management Consulting Services, Inc.: Health Literacy in Public Health

The face of North America has changed and continues to change. Currently, there are almost 45 million people in the nation who speak a language other than English, and over 30 million who were born outside of the United States. During the past decade, the number of Spanish and Asian language speakers grew by 50 percent. Community clinics and health centers are in the position of improving quality of care through the understanding of cultural competence and the implementation of Limited English Proficiency (LEP) strategies in public health practice.

Many Community Health Centers and Hospitals are integrating Patient Care Navigators as part of their Patient-Centered Medical Home Model and organization's strategic plan. Training Patient Navigators (PNs) in Health Literacy is crucial because they can learn about the challenges and barriers that patients and families encounter when trying to access appropriate health care services. It also helps them identify appropriate community resources and services for their patients/families based on their communication needs.

We want PNs to think of the patients/families not only from the health care and social services needs, but also from the communication needs perspective. Sometimes health care providers and non-clinical staff may make the assumption that patients/families do not adhere to treatment and follow-up with appointments because they do not want or are just "Non-compliant", which word should no longer be part of a provider's vocabulary. Many times patients/families display certain behaviors toward their treatment and health care needs not because they do not care, it may be that they do not understand the instructions or medication(s) given by their providers. Here is where I see the PNs coming in and playing a very important role in relations to Health Literacy, they can break down complex terms and medical information for their patients/families into simple terms and words, they also become advocates and mediators for the patients/families.

Below is the short version of a presentation I gave to a number of Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) recently.