At Penn Medicine, we celebrate Health Literacy Month each year in October by hosting educational events and activities that increase patient and staff awareness. Over the past decade, our Health Literacy Month celebration has grown from individual hospital events presented by staff to system-wide activities including national speakers.
As a patient education specialist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, I work with a team of staff and patients at the health system level as well as with individual entities, including community hospitals and home care, to plan and develop our programs. In this post, I’ll walk through some of our planning process and share insights from past events and activities.
Penn Medicine is a health system comprised of six hospitals, outpatient practices, and alliances with top community health systems across 27 counties in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. With 49,000 employees, the health system supports 135,000 adult admissions and almost 7 million outpatient visits annually.
But organizations of any size can learn from what we’ve created these past 10-plus years. Since our health system is composed of smaller community hospitals as well as larger academic institutions, many of the options for celebrating Health Literacy Month discussed in this blog can be used based on the resources of your health care organization.
Who Plans Health Literacy Month at Penn Medicine?
The Penn Medicine Health Literacy Collaborative is tasked with planning patient and professional development opportunities during Health Literacy Month.
This interdisciplinary group is composed of members with a wide range of backgrounds, including nursing, library science, instruction design, adult education, communication, public health, and patient and family advising. It partners with other entitites such as home and ambulatory care, which represent the perpectives of patient and family advisors; nursing; pharmacy; physical, occupational, and speech therapies; social work and case management; advance practice providers; and physicians.
By collaborating with entity-level departments, we add resources to our efforts. For example, one entity’s patient and family education committee collaborated with unit-based pharmacists to implement a 10-minute health literacy huddle on each unit during the month. Another group worked with its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) council to discuss health literacy at a monthly presentation. At the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, the patient and family education committee regularly partners with the pharmacy and information services department to set up health literacy tables in the cafeteria and ambulatory care areas one day during the month.
When Does Penn Medicine Start Planning for Health Literacy Month Each Year?
For our first celebration in 2013, planning started in July, just a few months before Health Literacy Month. Ever since, we’ve kicked off planning in November, immediately following the celebration, with a debrief of each activity and a discussion of opportunities to improve next year. Then planning takes a back seat to other activities until February, unless something requires additional lead time.
When Do You Host Events and Activities?
Initially, we hosted events and activities during Health Education Week (usually the third week of October), but as the celebration expanded, we decided to spread events and activities throughout the month. We discuss potential scheduling conflicts, especially for the system-wide presentation we organize each year. Each entity also has the opportunity to partner with other groups such as nursing professional development, Schwarz Rounds, and the DEI council. When partnering with other groups, we typically work around their schedules.
How Do You Promote Health Literacy Month Activities?
The Health Literacy Collaborative works closely with the internal communications department at Penn Medicine to determine the best approach to getting the word out. Our annual system-wide presentation is advertised in electronic communications that go to all employees. The various entities determine which communications work best for their staff, which may include communication to education leads in various departments. Entity-specific events and activities are advertised in local communications through electronic flyers. We have also presented at departmental manager and nursing leadership meetings through the years.
What Activities and Events Do You Produce, and How Do You Implement Them?
Each year, the Collaborative and individual hospital patient education/health literacy leadership consider feedback from the prior year’s debriefing and brainstorm new ideas. We always include a presentation, such as a video screening, a guest presentation, or a patient panel discussion. Another consistent activity is to communicate health literacy information via screen savers across the system’s inpatient units.
The largest of our entities, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, has implemented the most events and activities, while smaller entities have implemented a smaller number of options. Here are some examples of initiatives.
- Yearly theme. We typically choose something tied to either a national issue or one of the health system’s or entity’s strategic goals. Themes used in the past include “Be a Health Literacy Hero” and “Easy as APIE (assessment, planning, implementation, and evaluation).” For 2024, our focus is artificial intelligence and health literacy. As I write this blog post, our team is working on a catchy way to communicate our theme.
- Presentations. We choose presentations based on our theme and strategic objectives. In the past, we’ve included presentations on the impact of health literacy, evidence-based health literacy and patient education strategies, and evolving as a health-literate organization.
When planning a presentation with outside speakers, we must consider how to fund the event. Working with government-employed speakers is a wonderful way to provide excellent information for minimal costs, especially in the virtual environment. Because these speakers are paid by federal funds, there is no cost for a virtual presentation. If you are considering nongovernment speakers, make sure your budget includes funds for an honorarium or speaker’s fee, for the virtual platform, and for awarding continuing education credit.
- Newsletter articles. We partner with the communications departments in our various entities, based on the direction of patient education leaders. Article ideas include a calendar of events and a feature story on health literacy initiatives across the organization.
- Patient- and staff-facing tables. Through the years, Penn entities have provided health literacy information for staff and patients at tables set up in cafeterias and ambulatory care areas. This information has covered such topics as the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s “Ask Me 3®” initiative, using the patient portal, and taking medications (such as Narcan).
- Inpatient unit rounds. Rounds on all inpatient units at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania have included a focused message such as defining health literacy, criteria for becoming a health-literate organization, patient education resources, patient education documentation, and cultural humility. To add fun to rounds, we bring along giveaways such as candy and pens, play games, and take pictures of staff in a selfie frame or holding up medical jargon with corresponding plain language.
- Additional resources. As our organization has shifted to virtual professional development events and activities, we have included information from other sources such as Patient Education Guidelines for Health Care Professionals from the Health Care Education Association, podcasts such as Health Literacy Out Loud, webinars from the Institute for Healthcare Advancement, and articles from various journals. Our Collaborative has also developed a virtual, self-paced journal club offered through our learning management system that awards continuing education credit.
What Can We Do?
How will your organization celebrate Health Literacy Month this year? If you’ve never rolled out Health Literacy Month activities, start small and learn as you grow. Also, check out more ideas and free resources at healthliteracymonth.org.
About the Author
Dr. Carolyn Cutilli is a patient education specialist at The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and adjunct nursing faculty for the American International College, Springfield, Mass. She works with healthcare staff at the unit- through system-level to create and evaluate health information that is easy for patients and caregivers to understand and put into action. Her scholarly work focuses on teaching the research process, research on sources of health information utilized by older adults, grants for health literacy and communication projects, and national and international speaking and publishing.