Managing health conditions and navigating health systems can be complex, challenging, and confusing. The Health Resources and Services Administration [HRSA] (2022) defines personal health literacy as an individual’s capacity to locate, understand, and act upon information and resources to educate decisions and actions about their health, or the health of others. HRSA (2022) further describes organizational health literacy as the ability of organizations to equitably promote an individual’s personal health literacy. These definitions stress the duty of providers and systems to address health literacy to support equitable and accessible health information and care.
Health literacy is vital to managing health conditions, influencing behaviors, decision-making, medication use, and participation in visits with health care providers. Some populations are more likely to have lower health literacy skills (Hickey et al., 2018). These individuals are at higher risk for medication errors, difficulty managing chronic conditions, and poorer health outcomes (National Library of Medicine, n.d.). To support client understanding and participation, health care providers, including occupational therapy practitioners (OTPs), must consider the health literacy demands of verbal, visual, and written information shared during visits. They must also address how information is communicated and reviewed.
Literature supports a need to increase preparedness of OTPs to address health literacy. Preventative and health promotion interventions are not as regularly integrated into occupational therapy (OT) practice (Turcotte et al., 2015). Limited training and education, as well as availability of OT-related resources are further noted as barriers to OTPs’ familiarity with health literacy (Galati et al., 2018; Attard et al., 2021).
OTPs are skilled in analysis of activity and environmental demands to support an individual’s participation and engagement in occupation. In their interactions with clients, OTPs are well-suited professionals to support clients’ own personal health literacy and self-advocacy skills to engage more effectively with their health care providers. OTPs can empower clients to participate more actively in their health management.
The proposed program is a workshop for OTPs with application of health literacy strategies and practices within the OT setting. The workshop supports practitioners to promote client understanding and engagement. The program is informed by evidence, best practices, and theory, to shape a pertinent, effective, and succinct program for working OTPs. The workshop aims to increase OTPs’ self-efficacy to address health literacy within their work and use health literacy strategies with all clients.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/46611 |
| Date | 24 August 2023 |
| Creators | Sabatini, Victoria |
| Contributors | Stone Kelly, Lauren, Jacobs, Karen |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | Attribution 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
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