5 Fascinating Ideas I Learned at the IHA Health Literacy Conference — And How You Can Be Part of the Solution
By: Michael Villaire, MSLM, Chair/CEO, Institute for Healthcare Advancement
Wrapping up one of our annual IHA Health Literacy Conferences is always a special time for those of us at IHA. A lot of thoughts and feelings to sort through and contend with:
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Exhilaration. There is a palpable energy, even in the virtual conference environment, that you experience during and after the conference. So many like-minded individuals, so much incredible insight, and the feeling that you are part of something much bigger than yourself. It is, well, exhilarating!
This final bullet has always been a challenge. We’ve made great strides in setting up discussion groups and communities in the IHA Health Literacy Solutions Center, and we will continue to do that again this year. Stay tuned to the end of this blog for an opportunity to move forward on a number of issues that health literacy community members identified as being important to them.
This year, our conference theme was, “From Vision to Action: Advancing Health Literacy Across People and Systems.” There’s a lot to unpack there. In my mind, the key phrase is, From Vision to Action. How can we take what we want to do, what we see in our minds and feel is the right direction, and get traction and inertia to start to move forward with achieving our goals? As the saying goes, it takes a village.
So what are these 5 fascinating ideas that I learned, or took away from, the conference this year? Gee, it’s tough to narrow it down to just 5, but here goes.
1. Transmitting information in a conversation—a.k.a., communicating effectively—is not just about you having the facts.
It’s also about how the recipient of that information feels about that information. Maybe even more so.
We are living in a time in which facts are not necessarily “facts.” Information is manipulated, distractors divert our attention away to other narratives, and our echo chambers feed us information that falls more in line with our beliefs.
We have to develop better strategies for how we get critical information to those who need it most. That starts with them. Understanding who they are, where they’re at in terms of readiness, ability to accept challenging information, and (sorry to burst your bubble), whether they trust us.
Elisabeth Marnik, Ph.D, of The Evidence Collective, shared her strategy, called the Empathy-First Framework. In this approach, one leads with empathy. Step one is called “Care and ask.” Start with an affirmation of who they are and that they genuinely care about something. Don’t lead with your facts and corrections. Be curious and ask questions. Step two is to listen and let them feel fully heard. Then, and only then, ask if they’d be open to hear what you know. I can tell you from personal experience that leading with empathy puts you in a much better position to be heard yourself than starting with what can easily be interpreted as condescension.
This goes to the heart of what health literacy is all about. We can know everything there is to know about something, but if we can’t figure out a way to get that information to the person who needs it, in a way that they accept it, understand it, and are motivated to use it in they best way they can, then we’re all sunk.
2. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here to stay, and we need to take an active and robust role in advocacy and regulatory action.
AI is going to be—if it isn’t already—the single most influential advance in our history as a species. I think of events that have defined epochs in our history—discovery of fire, invention of the wheel, the advent of agricultural societies, the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, the Information and Digital Age, and now the rise of AI. This technology will fundamentally alter life as we know it. And we need to be active and engaged with the intersection of AI and health literacy, because those who see AI in healthcare as a means to do what they do now, faster and more economically, do not define “success” the same way we do. AI cannot be deployed unsupervised. We need to be quality and reality gatekeepers. As Professor Chris Trudeau, Esq., warned in his talk, “The AI-Assisted Practitioner: Practical Steps for Health Literacy Professionals,” while AI can provide many benefits—simplifying tasks, remembering/reminding of information, providing answers—the peril is right there, hand in hand with the promise. We need to use our judgment as a quality check. We need to take responsibility as healthcare professionals.
I recently saw a documentary, “The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist.” It was equal parts edifying and terrifying. As a critic, the film left me with many questions unanswered, or not answered satisfactorily. But it did help me understand the trajectory we are on, and realize that the only way we live in a future with any semblance of freedom is to advocate and speak our minds to those in positions of authority and influence. This is especially true in healthcare and health literacy.
3. Digital Literacy—“It’s Not You, It’s Us.”
As a follow-up to the above observation about AI, digital literacy is another advancement that we, too often, jump on in the healthcare system as a tool to increase efficiency. But whose efficiency? Ami Bhatt, M.D., told us that health literacy failure in the digital age is more often than not a systems design issue, a layer added on top of the already daunting health literacy challenge. So now, not only do patients need to navigate through the basics of health literacy—locate, comprehend, and utilize information and services to make informed health decisions (Healthy People 2030)—they need to do so within the framework of a digital patient portal or link to a telehealth visit. Ask yourself: How easy do we make it for that patient to even navigate to that place, let alone understand how to use it once they get there?
As Dr. Bhatt said, it’s a systems design issue. Remember, the other half of Healthy People 2030’s definition of health literacy speaks directly to us: “…the degree to which organizations enable individuals to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others.” Does our systems design enable success in those whom we serve? This is not just about being helpful. This is about safety. Again, Dr. Bhatt: “Clarity is a safety intervention.” The onus is on us. We’re the professionals. We design these systems. We know how much of a difference they can make. We just need to make sure we review, and test, and audit, and measure.
4. The future of health literacy must be created now.
As I think about my own decades-long tenure in this field, I realize I’m not terribly far away from hanging up my CEO hat and editor’s pen. Being in such a position prompts you to ask yourself, “How do you want to leave it?” The plain truth here is that we need new energy, new leadership, new ideas. We need to create a pipeline of early-career professionals who believe in health literacy and want to take on the mantle of leadership, and provide appropriate “care and feeding” of that pipeline. IHA is taking long and purposeful strides in this area.
During my closing plenary session, I spotlighted 2 young professionals who are demonstrating the passion and creativity that leaves me feeling optimistic about the future. But they are far from the only ones. For nearly every initiative I’m seeing these days, there are plenty of people who qualify as those “early career professionals” I mentioned. Refreshing, especially in a time when we see too many folks who look a lot like me in the leadership roles.
5. Building up our professionalism is a must.
There are too many who see health literacy as a nice to have, not a need to have. They could not be more wrong. Health literacy is about fairness, equity, safety, quality, autonomy, empowerment, human rights, trust, and dignity. It is a strategy to achieve better health outcomes, fewer adverse events, reduction of unnecessary resource utilization, greater patient (and provider) satisfaction, and greater population health.
I saw, listened to, and spoke with so many people at the conference who have true commitment and passion for this discipline called health literacy. My admiration and respect was just off the charts. They do what they do because they understand and they believe, and they see the results in their own practices.
We need to continue to galvanize this field into a legitimate field. We have made so much progress since I joined the club in 2000. Back then, the opportunities to learn and grow were not so abundant as they are now. IHA is doing its part by creating more such opportunities:
We need to continue to share, and collaborate, and network, and write about our successes, and our failures, and teach and mentor, and be mentored. We need to research and test and understand. We need to work together to enact policies and legislation for approaches that work.
And now, that opportunity I mentioned at the beginning.
During my closing plenary, and in a Roundtable discussion earlier in the conference, I spoke with folks and tapped friends and colleagues, and did some thinking and reading. I came up with a list of issues and challenges, things to worry about, and things to do. From these, we will create a list and a survey to see who is interested in working together on what.
When you see that survey, please take it. If one or more of those topics resonate with you, volunteer to be a member of that community of thinkers and action-takers.
Nobody is going to change the world but us. But it is our passion and our dedication which will move mountains. As I noted in that closing plenary, one of my authors and thinkers, Joseph Campbell, said this: “Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.”