Innovation in Education: Health Literacy for IPE Scholars

Health literacy is defined as the “capacity to obtain, process, and understand health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.” Inadequate health literacy leads to more emergency department visits, readmissions to hospitals, less preventive care, and poor medication administration skills.

The goal of this project was to develop an educational module on health literacy for the inter-professional scholars’ program at the University of Texas Medical Branch. After a needs assessment was performed, a one hour power point presentation was developed with videos and interactive learning. The presentation incorporates the definition of health literacy, problems associated with low health literacy, how to recognize low health literacy, and interventions to overcome the problem.

Pre and post test data were analyzed, utilizing the paired t-test showing significant improvement in the scholars’ knowledge of health literacy. With many schools lacking in teaching health literacy, many healthcare professionals are not aware of the problem. The next step will be to incorporate health literacy education into every health care educational program to overcome poor patient outcomes.