Promoting Health Inform. Literacy at UCSD Std Health Svc

University Of California San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Student Health Service at the University of California, San Diego provides primary health care for over 20,200 students, handling 31,000 patient visits annually. Recognizing that students who visit Health Services and the health care providers who serve them need reliable access to quality health care information, the Biomedical Library and Student Health Service have partnered in the last two years to develop programs that will enhance health information literacy for students and improve the information seeking skills of the clinicians who serve them. The Library views this partnership as an opportunity to reach students at a "teachable moment", when they have a health information question; in an era when fewer students visit the library, preferring to find information on the internet, taking advantage of such opportunities is essential to training a health literate population. Student Health Service views the partnership as an opportunity to gain expertise in efficient location of quality information resources. SHS has a strong Health Educator Advocate program, which provides peer-to-peer health education for students, but the peer counselors themselves have few health information seeking skills. While we have made considerable progress in meeting each our goals during the past two years, we have been hampered by the lack of both Internet access within Student Health Service and the equipment needed to teach students outside of SHS. SHS staff also lack the skills to develop an attractive health education website for their student clientele. With funding from the NLM Internet Access to Digital Libraries Grant, RFA-LM-02- 001, "Promoting Health Inform. Literacy at UCSD Std Health Svc", we propose overcome these barriers. With grant funds, we will provide organized information resources, acquire access capability and tools, and develop a training program that will reach both students and clinicians at the point of need.