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News Release |
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For Immediate Release
January 25, 2010
NWCC students part of group project to improve health literacy
Essential Skills for Work (ESWK) students Gordon Howard and Evan Brown were part of an eight-person team that included their Program Coordinator Casey Forslund, two former NWCC students now at UNBC, plus two health care professionals and a literacy advocate from the Storytellers Foundation in Old Hazelton.
The group was flown to Vancouver three times over the last eight months for “learning sessions” then back to the communities for “action periods” to implement its ideas and plans. The goal was to get literacy and health workers collaborating as it is now indisputably proven that literacy has a direct and powerful effect on personal health outcomes.
“In the organizers words, the aim of the Health Literacy Collaborative is to work together to improve how healthcare professionals and patients access, understand, evaluate and communicate information in an office practice within a community,” says Forslund. “The project revolved around three main goals – building relationships, increasing understanding and partnering.”
After community and student consultation, the group produced a DVD that is now a tool for health practitioners new to the Hazelton area – a “cultural primer” or “Gitxsan 101” as the students put it, that gives them tools, techniques, knowledge etc. to help make them more effective health care workers in the culturally distinct area.
Forslund says the group had a chance to present its work to a crowd of BC government ministers, health authority officials and international healthcare executives, among others and the students came away from the project for the better.
“It empowered the students, we were able to provide meaningful input to the collaborative, the project brought about an awareness of health literacy issues and changed the way patients and practitioners approach their relationship in and outside the clinic,” Forslund said. “Evan and Gordon had amazing opportunities to meet officials from different organizations and give powerful and candid input from a literacy learner’s perspective – their suggestions greatly helped shape the ideas that came out of the sessions.” He added NWCC grads Orie Shiga and Claire Wiebe showcased their professionalism, knowledge and skill by jumping in on the project midway and excelling at all the tasks they were given.
Practitioners who come to the community will now have the DVD as a guide that Forslund thinks will positively affect health care in the area over the long term.
The team is hosting a release party for the community in Gitsegukla in late February and there is a follow-up teleconference in four months where teams can reconnect and share where they have taken health literacy initiatives after the collaborative ended. To see more about the project, go to: http://www.impactbc.ca/PatientsasPartners/resourcesforregionalteams#plenary
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For more information contact:
Dave O’Leary
Chief Information Officer
Northwest Community College
Phone: 250.638.5402
Toll-Free: 1.877.277.2288
Email: doleary@nwcc.bc.ca