Sharing Our Super Power: Promoting Health Literacy Month at a Cancer Hospital

Background: In October 2020, the Patient Education (PE) staff at a large cancer hospital promoted national Health Literacy Month to the hospital’s clinicians and staff using several methods. The aim of this promotion was to build institutional awareness of the importance of health literacy, health numeracy and plain language. This was also a dedicated effort to brand PE as the “go to” source for health literacy, since health literacy is a unique skill of the PE health education and library staff. This month-long promotion also marked PE’s renewed effort to promote health literacy every October going forward.

Description: In August 2020, PE staff health educators and librarians were solicited for ideas on how to effectively promote Health Literacy Month. Twelve suggestions were presented, which were then divided into actions that could be implemented in October 2020, or which could be done in the future. Beginning in September 2020, PE staff met to formulate a promotion plan and implement separate task forces for the ideas that received the most votes as being feasible. These ideas were: a targeted email campaign, crafting weekly email signatures for PE staff to use throughout the month, tying in the library’s LibGuides, developing two infographics, one for health literacy and one for health numeracy, and promoting the infographics on social media and at institutional meetings. This resulted in several task forces that were successful in bringing these ideas to fruition.

Conclusion: The impact/outcome for all activities was measured when possible. Metrics were collected on Tweet impressions, when/where the infographics were shared, and how many times the email campaign was sent out. Some additional avenues of promotion were also able to be utilized, such as the PE institutional Intranet page, one of the hospital’s Facebook groups, and an institution-wide newsletter. Thousands of the hospital’s clinicians were reached via the various promotions, and several accolades and thank you notes were received from faculty and staff. The ideas that were able to be realized will be repeated, while those unable to be enacted upon will be evaluated for future use and, if applicable, pursued for 2021’s Health Literacy Month.