Episode 39: Sparking Curiosity About Health Literacy to Improve Patient Outcomes featuring Megan Berg, MA, CCC-SLP
What is health literacy? How does health literacy improve outcomes? How do we incorporate health literacy into our everyday practice? We discuss how you can use therapeutic interaction to provide information and empower a medical culture of respecting and valuing individual choices based both on a growing and evolving evidence base as well as personal values and priorities.
We discuss the continuum of health literacy from functional (e.g., “Here is a handout on your condition.”) to interactive (e.g., “Here is the time and address to a support group in your area.”) to critical (e.g., “There is a clinical study gathering data about people who are experiencing your diagnosis. Would you like to participate?”). We also discuss how increasing diversity fosters a culture of innovation, collaboration, and a broader lens through which to view solutions to problems.
To sum up, the future of rehabilitation therapy lies in building interdisciplinary connections from diverse communities that create critical health literacy opportunities (such as the Learning Health System) that allow us to bridge the gap between clinical research and clinical practice.
topics covered:
The 3 areas of health literacy: functional, interactive, and critical.
Learning Health Systems: the potential to capture data in real time to expand research’s reach.
SLP Diversity Corp: ideas need diversity to bloom
Next steps for our field: we need problem solvers, solution generators, and take-action leaders to foster a community that will enact needed changes.
Dig deeper with the following resources:
Nutbeam, Don. Health literacy as a public health goal: a challenge for contemporary health education and communication strategies into the 21st century. Health Promotion International, Volume 15, Issue 3, September 2000, Pages 259–267, https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/15.3.259
Friedman, C. et. al. Toward a science of learning systems: a research agenda for the high-functioning Learning Health System. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, Volume 22, Issue 1, January 2015, Pages 43–50, https://doi.org/10.1136/amiajnl-2014-002977
AHIMA Article: Weaving Together a Healthcare Improvement Tapestry: Learning Health System Brings Together Health IT Data Stakeholders to Share Knowledge and Improve Health. By Joshua C. Rubin, JD, MBA, MPH, MPP, and Charles P. Friedman, PhD
Learning Health Community: The Community's Mission is to galvanize a national grassroots movement in which multiple and diverse stakeholders work together to transform healthcare and health by collaboratively realizing the LHS Vision.
Therapy Insights: “Save time. Change lives. Resources for speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, and physical therapists.”
Megan Berg, MA, CCC-SLP
Megan spent 8 years as a science communicator before returning to grad school to pursue a career in speech-language pathology. Working and living with scientists from Antarctica to New Zealand to Tanzania built her skills in visually distilling complex information for diverse audiences. In order to capture the science story, she's gone 5 weeks without a shower, survived 40 below temperatures camping on an ice sheet, and driven 8 hours in first gear of a busted Land Cruiser in the middle of the night across the east African rift.
Megan received her undergraduate degree from the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand and graduated with a masters in speech-language pathology from the University of Colorado-Boulder. She interned for the Oglala Lakota County School District in Pine Ridge, South Dakota and on the stroke and traumatic brain injury units at Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital in Lincoln, Nebraska. She completed her clinical fellowship at the Weld RE-4 school district in Windsor, Colorado and is currently with Infinity Rehab in Missoula, Montana. She owns Therapy Insights, a company that provides handouts, interventions, and resources to SLPs, OTs, and PTs via Therapy Fix, a monthly subscription box.
Megan brings her broad range of experience as a science communicator to the field of clinical rehabilitation by creating visually engaging, inspirational therapy materials that are balanced with both evidence-based practice and the art of human connection.
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