Connecting to Diverse Communities for Health Literacy

Panelists representing three library systems – two urban and one rural – will present their experiences and best practices from three different approaches designed to reach diverse communities with culturally relevant programs in support of health literacy. Funded by the Network of the National Library of Medicine, the three systems collaborated with community stakeholders to identify health information needs and to determine best strategies for implementation.

Approaches included the following:
- In Salt Lake County, Utah, engagement studios comprising community experts were held to learn how libraries could best meet the health information needs of diverse communities. The chief recommendation was to hire “community wellness liaisons" (CWLs) to serve as bridges between the West Valley Library and service populations of Hispanic and Pacific Islander/Native Hawaiian residents. The CWLs were hired for their connection to the communities they would represent and worked alongside library staff. Their activities, and those of similar CWLs at the main branch of the Salt Lake City Public Library, included organizing culturally relevant programming, engaging in health information outreach within their communities and conducting culturally specific skills training with library staff. Despite COVID-related interruptions, the program was successful enough to prompt the Utah Department of Health to fund an iteration of the work after federal funding for the program ended.

- In Portland, Ore., Multnomah County Library's Bilingual Chinese Regional Librarian and Bilingual Vietnamese Library Assistant led the Healthy Pathways Program offering healthy lifestyle workshops for Asian families with a specific focus on Vietnamese, Mandarin, and Cantonese speaking populations. The project supported these communities' health literacy needs by offering culturally relevant health lifestyle programs on nutrition and healthy cooking, fitness and stress relief in their own language. Each program included a short presentation by library staff on MedlinePlus showing participants how to access health and healthy lifestyle information in different languages. Staff training on health information resources in Vietnamese and Simplified Chinese helped prepare them for offering health information to these community members.

- In southwestern Oregon, Jackson County Library Services (JCLS) serves the 220,000 residents of rural Jackson County with 15 branches. The mission of the Jackson County Library District is to connect everyone to information, ideas, and each other. In 2015, JCLS adopted the 2016-2021 strategic plan, which was augmented through community listening sessions with a new 2021 Strategic Roadmap. The 2021 Roadmap prioritizes health literacy as a strategic focus. Their emphasis on health has resulted in responsive community outreach, staff training to support health reference work, community partnerships to offer a bilingual, bicultural ¡Salud! Here's to Your Health! Project and JCLS’s heroic wildfire disaster response during what Oregon Governor Kate Brown called a “once-in-a-generation event.“

Panelists in the program will first provide an introduction to health literacy and why it is crucial to equitable health access for diverse communities, then offer first-person details from the librarian’s perspective on each of the programs. They will discuss why they engaged in these programs, share data on program effectiveness and give best practices that worked for them in connecting to communities in the interest of health literacy. The presenters will allow time for audience questions and comments.