WHY GET INVOLVED IN HEALTH INFORMATION WEEK 2021?

Health Information Week (5th-11th July 2021) is a multi-sector, week-long, health information campaign: it’s about raising the profile of health literacy; offering a platform for collaborative working between different partners; and reminding us all what good, reliable, health information looks like. 2020’s Health Information Week was not without its challenges (notably, a pandemic), but past participants have given us six good reasons why to get involved in Health Information Week 2021:

• A chance to support your community, and fly the flag for factual, useful health information from credible resources. Help educate people to understand the difference between good and bad health information, and why this is so important. This is perhaps the key reason to be involved in Health Information Week, this year more than ever.
• Be part of a local event that is being echoed all over the country. Retweeting support for others and being able to exchange and swap ideas while our focus is all on the same thing is very effective. It’s great to learn from others, share experiences, and feel that everyone is working towards the same goal.
• Use Health Information Week as a focal point to develop new partnerships. Hospital libraries, public libraries, school libraries, community groups, local charities, local authorities. These all have something to offer, and something to gain, from working with each other and being part of a nation-wide campaign
• Use Health Information Week to raise your profile within your organisation. Health Information Week can be a great opportunity to link up with other departments or staff groups in your organisation. For example, if you work in a hospital library, perhaps you can work with your PALS team, patient experience team, or comms? If you work in a public library, can you reach out to other services in your local authority – schools, older people outreach teams? Perhaps you’ll be able to continue the relationship after Health Information Week, and find new ways of working together.
• Promote your resources to a new audience. Health Information Week is a brilliant way to showcase your resources – be they your physical space, graphic novels, websites, leaflets, databases, book groups, even your helpful and knowledgeable staff – to a range of people. Increase your footfall and boost your visitor statistics too!
• A chance to be creative. Social media, using the #HIW2021 hashtag, is a simple, free, way to make your Health Information Week campaign fun and interesting. In the past, yoga groups, mindfulness sessions, fruit and veg giveaways, pop-up information stalls, human libraries and children’s storytelling events have all been creative ways to engage an audience.

Taking part in Health Information Week doesn’t have to be expensive or time-consuming: have a look at the Health Information Week website for ideas to take part, which range from Twitter discussions, health information poster displays and blogging, to big multi-partner, cross-city events.  You’ll also find links to trusted sources of information, our blog, marketing materials, and contact details for the Health Information Week team. If it helps, each day of Health Information Week has a theme: you can use these to build your events, or you can choose a couple, or none at all – it’s up to you!

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Find out more about Health Information Week 2021

Follow the Health Information Week campaign on Twitter – @Healthinfoweek

Interesting Information literacy PHd presentations at iDocQ 2014 colloquium

I attended iDocQ 2014 on Friday at Glasgow University.  iDocQ is the annual doctoral colloquium aimed at students studying for PhDs in information science and other related disciplines at Scottish universities that are members of the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science. I was there as I'm about to start a PHd by Published works at Edinburgh Napier University. My PHd will be in relation to my information literacy and lifelong learning research work.

It was a really interesting day it started with a fascinating keynote presentation on research impact delivered by Professor John Robertson on bias in reporting of the independence debate in the media 'Research Impact on Media and Academic Elites. 

After a coffee break there was student presentation on their work as a 20×20 format (PechaKucha 20x20 is a simple presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images advance automatically and you talk along to the images). It was great to see a range of intersting topics. There were a couple of PHd topics of particulary interested to me and this CoP:

Chikezie Emele RGU PHd Student 20x20 Photo by Hazel HallImprove the information literacy of men in Nigeria with prostrate cancer - Chikezie Emele, Robert Gordon University PHd student PHd Thesis Title Accessibility and Usability Of Prostate Cancer Information in SouthEast, Nigeria. 

Chikezie is at the early stages of his research but he spoke about the need to make the information culturally sensitive. For dissemination purposes he is looking at using the services of the local town crier as this is one of the sources of information that the locals use.

The radio is an other source used. other forms of dissemination being looked at are 'one to one sessions' and printed material. Mobile phone usage has spread widely so he will also look at using that. He wants to change the men from passive to proactive information seekers.

To investigate the everyday life information seeking of visually impaired young people - Katy Loudon, University of Strathclyde

Katy spoke about external and internal barriers and that in relation to visually impaired most barriers are seen as technology barriers but their are wider barriers. Katy was previously a primary school teacher and is bringing her teaching experience to her PHd. Her MSc dissertaion was An investigation into the information practices of first-time mothers of infants from birth to 12 months For me these add to the studies which link information literacy to lifelong learning. 

After lunch Hazel Hall presented Using social media for impact looking at the range of social media tools to help us increase research impact .

Photo by Hazel HallWe did an activity in pairs identify who used what socila media services and whether they were useful for: academic impact, personal impact and research into practice impact.

I currently use a few including Blogging, Twitter, Slideshare and LinkedIn, there are however a few that I need to check out includingAcademia.edu and Mendeley. 

The last part of the day was a “research clinic” panel, where questions submitted anonymously by students were answered by the expert panel members on the basis of their own PhD experience, research activities, and experience attained in supervising doctoral candidates. On the panel was Hazel Hall, Edinburgh Napier; Ian Anderson, Glasgow; David McMenemy, Strathclyde; and Elizabeth Tait, Robert Gordon. I had submitted a question regarding the advice they would give a student starting their PHd Published by Works. I got some useful advice and also picked up some tips from the other student questions.  

For more insight into the day see the tweets from the day at #idocq2014

Thanks to the four students who organised the day  Frances Ryan of Edinburgh Napier University;Calum Liddle of Strathclyde University, Chikezie Emele of Robert Gordon University; and Wachi Klungthanaboon of Glasgow University.

Health sessions help people online

I came across a small item of news in last month's CILIP Update about an initiative at York Libraries 'helping people living in the city find information about health matters'. What's great about this piece of news is that

'the NHS Helath Online sessions have been taking place in a number of the city's libraries, offering not just access to accurate health information but also teaching the skills needed to find it'.

This is great news and the sort of exemplar I was looking for my book chapter Information literacy in health management. As the article says 'combining information literacy training with the sessions should help equip those attending with skills they need to search independently in the future.'

Well done to York Libraries.

Crawford, J., Irving, C. (2013). Information literacy and lifelong learning: Policy issues, the workplace, health and public libraries Cambridge, UK: Chandos Publishing

A Healthcare Lens for the SCONUL Seven Pillars Model

A Healthcare Lens sounds like a brilliant idea and indeed different lenses or ways of looking at information literacy is something I'm a strong advocate of.

I therefore read with interest Michelle Dalton's blog post introducing a healthcare lens for the Seven Pillars of Information Literacy and the subsequent discussions that took place in the infolit journal club http://infolitjournalclub.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/journal-club-meeting-28-august-8-9pm.html

I now need to read her article in JIL

Dalton, M. 2013. Developing an evidence-based practice healthcare lens for the SCONUL Seven Pillars of Information Literacy model. Journal of Information Literacy, 7(1), pp. 30-43. http://dx.doi.org/10.11645/7.1.1813

I also need to look at the updated SCONUL Seven Pillars model with regard to the Information Literacy Framework - an item that keeps slipping down my to-do-list.

Health literacy: let's think again

Catching up on my emails after being away and came across this interesting article 'Health literacy: let's think again' by Graham Kramer a GP and National Clinical Lead Self Management and Health Literacy, Scottish Government.

He starts by saying that he doesn't like the term 'health literacy' as not many people understand it. Sounds familar! Anway the intersting thing is that he says that lessons should be learned from computer literacy and instead of making everyone technically expert, computers have got easier to understand. At this point you may disagree but I remember the early days of using computers when you had to use command language to interact with computers for most things. He also gives the example of the results of an MOT which are provided in simple terms that a layperson will understand.

He argues that healthcare professionals should stop using technical words such as those used in the lab that the patient / layperson is unlikely to understand. As he says

"It's not easy – peoples' knowledge and skill levels are not as obvious as a physical disability and this   unintentionally perpetuates the problem. In fact people often go to extraordinary lengths to hide their lack of understanding and as a result we consistently overestimate their abilities and knowledge.

But if we are going to crack this problem we need to spend less time trying to get our patients to understand us and more time trying to understand them. The issue is not the poor health literacy of patients but the low ‘lay literacy’ of us professionals."

I also think people need to have the skills to ask more questions and evaluate what they receive. Difficult I know in an health related emotive situation but helps if you have these skills and competencies to draw upon.