Literacy:
Spanning the U.S.
Pictograms help Ottawa
pharmacist overcome patients' 'health illiteracy'
Ottawa Citizen: 9.10.2015 by Elizabeth
Payne, Ottawa Citizen
An Ottawa pharmacist is
using pictures to help the medicine go down, an innovation that has the
potential to improve healthcare for everyone from Syrian refugees in Europe to
children in CHEO’s emergency room.
Regis Vaillancourt, director of pharmacy
at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, has spent years developing
pictograms to help people better understand how to take their medicine and
manage their health.
It is a response to the
problem of poor medical literacy that affects surprising numbers of people in
Canada and around the world and potentially threatens their health.
According to
Vaillancourt, about three out of five adult Canadians do not have adequate
health literacy levels to fully understand information they are given about
their health and medication. They might have a low level of literacy, but when
it comes to understanding medical directions and medications, it is not enough.
Seniors, immigrants and the unemployed are the most likely to have low health
literacy levels, he added.
Refugees on the move to
Europe and elsewhere right now are at particular risk, he noted, with a
combination of language difficulties and unmet health needs. Vaillancourt has
been working with the International
Pharmaceutical Federation to adapt software that would allow
pharmacists in Germany to produce pictograms and words in Arabic to help
refugees manage their medicine.
In Canada, almost every
pharmacist has a story about patients misunderstanding how and when to take
their medicine or even where to put it, in some cases, Vaillancourt said.
Many patients simply do
not understand the instructions and may try to hide the fact rather than asking
for clarification.
That is where
pictograms come in. READ MORE !
Free Literacy Program Helping People
in Bryan
KAGSTV.com: 9.16.2015 VIDEO
For
Celeste Morgan, learning English isn't easy.
She
grew up speaking Spanish, but she now works for a preschool in Bryan, where
knowing English is a must.
"I
want to be better with my language and it's very hard,” she said. “I listen to
English, you know, and I live in the country.”
It’s
one of the reasons, why she chose to participate in a local program.
The
Bryan library system is giving people a much needed tool to improve their
quality of life.
Through
donations from the Dollar General Foundation and The Institute of Museum and Library services, adults can receive free
English lessons.
The
family literacy librarian at Clara
B. Mounce Library says 75 people are enrolled in the ESL
class. READ MORE !
Menlo Park: Project Read picks up needed steam on way to 30th
year
San Jose Mercury News: 9.09.2015 by Kevin Kelly
A project that started
in a cramped basement office 30 years ago and in 2013 was being run by two
people on a part-time basis is getting an infusion.
Project
Read-Menlo Park, the adult literacy program for the Menlo Park Library, is starting to reap
needed money from Literacy Partners, a nonprofit fundraising arm it established
in 2010 that has allowed it to bring on additional staffers and incorporate new
technology to make it easier to coordinate tutoring schedules.
"When I became
program manager in July of 2013 ... we only had two part-time English teachers
four hours a week. That was it," said Roberta Roth, literary program
manager for Menlo Park Library. She said the program now has four more
part-timers: a computer lab coordinator, office assistant, classroom
coordinator and a technology assistant.
Project Read,
established in 1985, was one of the first literacy programs to be supported by
the state. It offers free literacy education to adults. It was started on a
whim by Eric Lyden, a former librarian.
"(He) was working
on jail outreach and he hooked up with a couple of other people here and they
mounted the program," Roth said.
When the library was
redesigned in the early 1990s, a Project Read section was added. It includes a
computer lab where tutors can meet with students or ESL learners can perform
lessons on their own. READ MORE !
Resolution promotes
area literacy
Montgomery Advertiser: 9.16.2015 by Rebecca Burylo
Nearly 14,000 adults in the Montgomery area are reading at a
second grade level or below and a resolution signed by Mayor Todd Strange on Wednesday hopes to bring awareness to the need for
literacy.
The resolution, sponsored through the Capital
Area Adult Literacy Council marks next week, Sept. 20-26 as the National Adult Education and Family Literacy Week in Montgomery.
“An educated community can be lots of things,” Strange said.
“Like full service community schools. If we can get the Capital Area Adult
Literacy Council into schools, we can reach students’ parents, or guardians who
can take advantage of GED opportunities.”
For 30 years, the council has been helping those in the
Montgomery improve their writing and has helped more than 5,000 people improve
their reading and writing for job employment and personal betterment. They have
also trained more than 3,000 volunteers.
READ MORE !
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