AI Solutions Hub: Navigating the AI and Health Literacy Nexus 

By Michael Villaire, MSLM 
 

We welcome you to explore a new hub on the Institute for Healthcare Advancement (IHA) Health Literacy Solutions Center: AI Solutions Hub: Navigating the AI and Health Literacy Nexus.  

AI raises questions that have worked their way into the national (and international) conversation, such as: 

• What is it?  

• Is it dangerous?  

• How can it help me?  

• How can it make my work more efficient? 

   

The AI Solutions Hub aims to provide a forum for all of us to learn, share, and ask questions about the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and health literacy. These discussions are aimed at questions around the larger impact, and integration, of AI in our daily lives, and in healthcare more specifically.  

 

What Is the Purpose of AI Solutions Hub? 

There is much to learn, and explore, when it comes to AI and healthcare. One major objective of this community is to answer the following question:  

If we were able to design an ideal future, where AI could effectively support our efforts to advance and improve health literacy toward achieving health equity,  
what would that future look like? 

The future is an abstract concept. But there are things we can do now to navigate toward a desired future. We’d like to engage with you in articulating and (if possible) coming to a consensus on that desired future. We’ll do this through a collective effort with other members of the health literacy community.  

We want to hear your thoughts and ideas, your concerns and worries, what you’re working on now, and how others can collaborate with you. We encourage you to share with the community, so that our work is more efficient, collaborative, and directed toward and in service of our shared goals. 

 

What Will I Find in AI Solutions Hub? 

Here are a few things you can do in this new hub today:  

• Access discussions with subject matter experts (SMEs), such as Tracy Mehan. 

• Explore the latest AI resources and trainings by SMEs on AI and health literacy. 

More ideas down the pipeline: 

• Suggestions for who to follow on social media to learn more 

• A database of individual and group projects that gives you an accurate picture of who is doing what in this area, along with opportunities to share and collaborate 

• A newsfeed of the latest information, so you can stay up to date 

• An AI-enhanced search feature that lets you search for resources

How Can I Help Answer the Main Objective Question? 

 
If we were able to design an ideal future, where AI could effectively support our efforts to advance and improve health literacy toward achieving health equity, what would that future look like? 

You can help us answer this question in a number of ways. 

Information Gathering and Sharing 

At our May IHA Health Literacy Conference, we held a Roundtable discussion to collect some thoughts, ideas, and concerns around AI in health literacy. Those initial thoughts are in the accompanying presentation.  

Please review the presentation and share your opinions on SurveyMonkey about which of these issues are of greatest importance to you and which issues are missing. 

Our goal is to create a community-informed list of topics and areas that are of greatest interest and concern and use that as a basis for formulating a roadmap for moving forward. Once this list is complete, we’ll post it on the AI Solutions Hub page. We’ll also use it to inform our efforts to:  

• Create webinars. 

• Ask and answer questions. 

• Leverage the expertise of our SMEs to provide education, clarity, insights, and best guesses on how each of these areas is progressing. 
   

AI in Health Literacy Virtual Event 

Once we have your input on the list, we’ll set up a virtual community forum, hosted by the Health Literacy Solutions Center, bringing together SMEs to provide their best responses to the questions and issues you raised while reviewing the topic areas we collected. We’ll engage with you in putting forward some next steps for establishing goals on moving us toward that desired future. And we’ll post and track progress on those goals on the Solutions Center.  

How Can I Learn More?  

If you have questions or concerns around AI in health literacy, here are some ways to learn more about this topic.  

• Watch archived conference sessions and webinars on AI.  

• Read up on the latest AI blogs.  

• Respond to the survey about which are the most important issues.  

• Let us know what you want to learn more about in the discussion. We’ll do our best to bring SMEs forward to answer your questions as best they can. 

We may not be able to completely control the future, but we can put a pin in some of the outcomes we wish to see and move collectively toward those outcomes. Let’s work together to make that happen.  

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