Maribeth Buie: How Your Local Pharmacy Can Help

Every day, unintentional poisonings account for nearly 87 deaths and over 2,200 emergency room visits in the United States.  A large proportion of unintentional poisonings may be attributed to low health literacy.  This is such an important topic that an entire chapter in the Staying Healthy curriculum is devoted to ‘Medicines,’ including the difference between over-the-counter and prescription drugs, reading a prescription label, measuring medicines, side effects/warning labels, etc.

Prescription labels and drug information can be confusing for native English speakers at any education level.  Difficulties arise with small print, ambiguous wording, unfamiliar drug names, and inconsistent formats.  Logic follows that it will be even harder for adult learners.  As they make gains in their health literacy, the local pharmacy can help!

Some pharmacies offer prescription labels and drug information in languages other than English, all your students have to do is request it!

I took an informal poll of four major pharmacies in Florida – Walgreens, CVS, Publix, and WalMart.  Walgreens offers the most in terms of language translation.  They offer prescription labels/drug information in thirteen languages (other than English):  Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portugese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.  Walgreens registers all pharmacists able to speak multiple languages to provide translation services.  So, for example, if a Japanese-speaking customer arrives at the pharmacy, the Walgreens computer system can locate and call a pharmacist that speaks Japanese to provide information or answer questions (if one is on staff anywhere in the United States).  In addition, Walgreens offers large-print labels in English or Spanish upon request.

Other pharmacies also offer translation services.  CVS offers prescription label/drug information in Spanish and French, and Publix offers prescription label/drug information in Spanish.  WalMart does not offer any type of reliable translation service.

It is important to teach your students that a pharmacist is a great resource.  Pharmacists not only help with understanding prescription medicines, but they can also help with understanding over-the-counter medicines – especially which medicine is right for an individual’s particular symptoms.  Another great idea, invite your local pharmacist to speak to your class. Most pharmacies value and encourage community involvement and education.

The ultimate goal is to help adult learners improve their health literacy, including understanding labels and information in English.  However, on the way toward accomplishing that goal, the local pharmacy can be a literal life saver.

2012 Grant Opportunity: Florida Health Literacy Initiative

Deadline next week – March 8^th

Eighteen mini-grants of up to $5,000 will be awarded through the generous support of Blue Cross and Blue Shield.  The Initiative provides training, resources, and funding to assist Florida ESOL and family literacy programs to integrate health education into their instruction.  The objective is to help students develop basic literacy and English language skills while gaining information to make informed choices regarding their health and nutrition.

Applicants must be nonprofit or government-based organizations providing adult ESOL and/or family literacy instruction in Florida.  Services may be delivered via classes, small groups, and one-to-one tutoring.   If you have any questions, please contact our Health Literacy Coordinator, Maribeth Buie, at 407-246-7110, ext. 209.

Click here for the grant application and guidelines.

Sarasota YMCA: HIPPY Families Focus on Nutrition and Staying Healthy

Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters, or HIPPY, is a parent-based literacy program for low-income parents of preschoolers.  InSarasota, HIPPY families, considered to be the poorest of the poor, face barriers of poverty, as well as struggles associated with lower literacy rates, lower educational attainment levels and higher incidences of substance abuse and crime.

Many low-literate adults can get lost in the healthcare system, lose their benefits and endanger their lives and the lives of their children. HIPPY attempts to engage families, increasing their health literacy by giving them the ability to obtain, process and understand health information and by guiding them in choosing a healthy lifestyle, knowing how to seek medical care and taking advantage of preventive measures.

HIPPY uses a curriculum with a Health Literacy component, which includes standard topics such as finding a doctor, healthy, eating, visiting the doctor, nutrition and fitness; however, staff enhances the promotion of better health by offering additional support.  Staff provides parents with one-on-one time to discuss issues, referral for services and provide simple tips on staying fit and healthy eating.

In helping improve people’s access to health information and their capacity to use it effectively, staff has learned many valuable lessons; it takes simplicity and consistency to help families achieve success.  The following “Healthy Snacking Tips” article from our “Family Times” newsletter is one such tool.

It often seems that the biggest challenge to healthy eating comes not from large meals, but instead from the seemingly small choices we make at snack time.  It is important to remember that while snacks are small, each little choice quickly adds up in your daily nutrition.

Here are some simple tips to help you make better snacking choices. Bon Appetit!

1. Choose snacks that will satisfy your hunger such as fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds and low-fat dairy products.
2. Make snacking on vegetables more interesting by dipping them in non-fat salad dressings or hummus
3. Be creative. Spend a little extra time in the kitchen at the beginning of the week and experiment with different recipes for healthy snacks. There are numerous books and websites specifically dedicated to healthy snack recipes.
4. Don’t be misled by labels. Foods labeled as low or fat free can still have a high amount of calories. In addition, foods labeled as cholesterol free can still have a significant amount of fat, saturated fat and sugar. Always read the nutrition labels on the back of the product.

Healthy snack options include:

• A sliced apple with a tablespoon of peanut butter

• Baby carrots with some hummus

• A small bowl of high fiber cereal with fat free milk

• Homemade trail mix – a mixture of 2 tablespoons each of almonds, cashews, dried cranberries and raisins

HIPPY is dedicated to promoting better health through a mix of home visitation, parenting group meetings, special projects and service referrals and by consistently reinforcing skills, which can lead to increased health literacy.

Staying Healthy tips: Nutrition

New Year’s resolutions often include a resolve to get healthier, by moving more or eating better.  Staying Healthy is a great health literacy tool to teach about good nutrition.  According to Florida’s adult ESOL learners, learning about healthy eating habits is the most important tool gained from the Staying Healthy section of adult literacy courses.

Staying Healthy’s chapter on nutrition explains about important nutrients, how to decipher a nutrition label, what to eat, what not to eat, and how to determine a healthy weight using the BMI scale.  When teaching about nutrition, there are a few simple tips that make nutrition easy to understand:

1.  Aim for more fruits and vegetables (5 to 9 per day), more fiber (20 grams per day), and less sodium (less than 1,200 milligrams per day).  Try to incorporate whole-grains.  Switch to fat-free or low-fat milk and dairy products instead of their full-fat counterparts.

2.  Balance calories by enjoying your food, but eating less.  Avoid oversize portions.  The plate rule, promoted by the FDA and Michelle Obama, is an easy way to do this at meal time.  Half of the plate should be fruits and vegetables, one quarter o the plate should be whole grains, and one quarter of the plate should be protein.  See Figure 1.

Figure 1.  Plate Rule.  Source:  Choosemyplate.gov.

3.  Try frozen or canned fruits and vegetables if fresh produce is too expensive – just try to avoid added ingredients like sodium, sugar, butter, or sauces.

4.  Drink 8-10 eight-ounce glasses of water a day.  Avoid sugary drinks.

Combined with moving more, these simple steps will put you on the right track toward staying healthy in the new year!

FLC’s New Women’s Health Curriculum Wins National Award

Women's Health

The Florida Literacy Coalition (FLC) is proud to announce that its health literacy curriculum, Women’s Health: A Special Addition to Staying Healthy, received the 1^st place award for Reads-Easy™ in the National Health Literacy Innovators contest.

The Health Literacy Innovators Awards, a national contest to reward organizations and individuals for their commitment to excellence in plain language and health literacy principles, is sponsored by Health Literacy Innovations, creator of health literacy resources and the Health Literacy Advisor, the nation’s first interactive health literacy software tool.

Women’s Health won the ReadsEasy™ Publication award, which emphasizes the use of plain English, proper graphics and a proven reading level of 6^th grade or lower determined by industry assessments.

The Women’s Health curriculum covers topics including menstruation, menopause, pregnancy, breast and reproductive cancers, sexually transmitted infections and domestic abuse. The student guide is loaded with photographs, illustrations and easy-to-read charts; the teacher guide includes practice dialogs and enriching class activities.

FLC is truly honored by this award and shares it with the great team of people who developed the curriculum.  FLC hopes this award will help raise awareness about women’s health and the availability of this free resource.

That’s right – FREE!!  Women’s Health, and its sister publication, Coping With Stress, are special additions toStaying Healthy: An Enlish Learner’s Guide to Health Care and Healthy Living. Staying Healthy is the core health literacy curriculum FLC developed in 2008 with support from the Florida Department of Education, Division of Career and Adult Education.

As some of you may know, Staying Healthy is the central component of FLC’s health literacy initiative which, through the support of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida, provides health-education resources for local adult English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) and family literacy programs.

Florida adult ESOL programs can order FREE copies of Staying Healthy, the award-winning Women’s Health and Coping with Stress curricula from FLC by clicking here.  Each of these publications is also available as a PDF here.

Health Literacy Partnerships Training Opportunity

On Tuesday, Nov. 9, the Florida Literacy Coalition‘s health literacy coordinator, Naomi Soto, will be at the Leon County Health Dept. in Tallahassee, facilitating a training for health literacy educators and health professionals about the power of partnerships in health literacy education.

Staying Healthy

The workshop will emphasize the importance of localized partnerships between libraries, community-based organizations and healthcare professionals.  The training will include an overview of the freely available Staying Healthy curriculum and its additions Women’s Health and Coping with Stress. The workshop will also highlight hands-on classroom activities and leave time for discussion and idea sharing. All participants will also receive a free copy of the Staying Healthy curriculum.

Two trainings will be offered (both trainings will cover the same information):

1. 10 a.m. – 1 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 9
2. 3-6 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 9

**Three CEUs will be offered for all nurses who attend! 

The Florida Department of Health Women’s Health Program will be giving away health materials for community-based organizations to use in their health literacy outreach efforts.  The materials offered will cover the following topics: Heart Disease, Breast Cancer, Teen Health and Development, Parenting Skills, HIV/AIDS, Mental Health and more.  All items will be given away on a first-come, first-serve basis.

There is no cost to attend this training opportunity, but registration is required.  So tell all of your friends about it!

Training Venue: Leon County Health Dept., 872 W. Orange Ave., Tallahassee, FL  32304.

Have questions?  Call Naomi Soto at FLC – (407) 246-7110 ext. 209, or send her an email: soton@floridaltieracy.org. More information about FLC’s health literacy initiative is also available here.

This is a collaborative learning event brought to you by the Florida Literacy Coalition and the Florida Department of Health Women’s Health Program with space allowance from Leon County Health Department – Office if Minority Health.  This workshop was made possible through the generous support of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida.

Tutor/Teacher Virtual Training, Oct. 21, Focuses on Teaching Women’s Health

Teachers and tutors working with adult learners may often encounter diverse cultural practices and concepts. That’s why FLC has decided to offer this training.  It will introduce anthropological approaches to health and culture and explore ways teachers and tutors can be aware of and work with differences within the context of a women’s health curriculum.

The Florida Literacy Coalition recently developed Women’s Health, a Special Addition to Staying Healthy. Curriculum topics include female reproductive changes, pregnancy, breastfeeding, breast and reproductive cancers, and domestic abuse. And, all participants will receive a free student guide upon completion of the training evaluation.

Fee: Free. Please share this opportunity with your fellow tutors and teachers.

You can participate from the comfort of your own home or office. All you need is a computer with speakers and Internet access.

How it works: We will send you a web address (URL) when you register.  Approximately 5-10 minutes before the workshop is scheduled to begin, you simply go to that URL, enter your full name, and click “Login” for the session.

Heide Castaneda, PhD, MPH

Presenter:  Heide Castañeda, PhD, MPH is a medical anthropologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of South Florida. Her primary research interests include immigrant and refugee health, social inequality and medicine, and health policy.

To register for this free training opportunity, click here.

Contact Naomi Soto, Health Literacy Coordinator, with any questions.  She can be reached via email: soton@floridaliteracy.org, or via phone: (407) 246-7110 ext. 209.

Take Advantage of Pre-Conference Workshops!

Tuesday, May 4, there are three pre-conference workshops beginning at 1 p.m. – each is free, but registration is required. This is a great excuse to arrive to Captiva Island a bit early (wink, wink). 

Improving Services for Adults with Learning Disabilities Using Research-Based Resources
1-5 p.m.                                                
Facilitators:  Aaron Kohring
Participants will identify instructional and program planning needs for serving adults with learning disabilities. They will use research-based resources to help address these concerns and to improve practice. This initiative is made possible through the generous support of LINCS Region II Resource Center, a program of The National Institute for Literacy (NIFL).

Facilitating the Adult Learner
1-4 p.m.
Facilitator:  Claire Valier
To be an effective adult educator, it’s critically important that our focus begins with adult learners. The instructor will have hands-on activities and share interactive activities that engage and foster adult learning.  This workshop will address the following topics:

• understanding adult learners and adult learning
• recognizing different ways in which learning occurs
• facilitating more meaningful learning
• adult-friendly learning environments. 

This initiative is made possible through the generous support of the Florida Department of Education, Division of Career and Adult Education.

STAYING HEALTHY: Health Literacy Curriculum and Resources for ESOL
1-5 p.m.
Facilitator:  Naomi Soto
Learn how to successfully integrate health literacy into high beginning and low intermediate level Adult ESOL instruction. Increase health literacy awareness among your students and encourage them to make healthy choices in relation to nutrition, preventative health care, accessing health services and other related issues. 

This 3-hour session includes an overview of the freely available Staying Healthy curriculum, hands-on activities/resources and time for discussion and idea sharing. Each participant will receive a copy of the Staying Healthy Student and Teacher’s Resource Guide.  Sponsored by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida.

To register for a pre-conference workshop

If you have already submitted your conference registration, email Erin Balleine, balleine@floridaliteracy.org, to register for the workshop of your choice.

If you have NOT already completed your conference registration, you can do so and include registration for one of the workshops above by clicking here. 

Which are you most interested in?  Let us know by commenting below!