Piloting (online) health literacy - 'easy as she goes?'

On Thursday afternoon I introduced Hodges' model to six student nurses. In wrapping up the session I suggested the students look up 'health literacy' indicating how Hodges' model can incorporate reflections on the many literacies essential for life (and death) in the 21st century. For one student this small kernel of news was unfortunately too late, a piece of work having just been handed in.

Great to see the following item in this week's HSJ - Health literacy training on offer for 100,000:

The NHS Commissioning Board will work with a charity to offer 100,000 people access to training in online health literacy over the next year, it has announced.

The board’s national director for patients and information Tim Kelsey said on Thursday it had made the agreement with UK Online Centres, an organisation which specialises in tackling digital exclusion.
The work comes in the run up to the board’s deadline of 2015 for patients to have access to their GP health records. ...

Health literacy training on offer for 100,000, Health Service Journal. 14 March 2013, p.10.

In terms of health literacy as a whole this is one aspect, but as the previous post point out we need to consider human factors. Innovation  also involves physical and cognitive access, relationships, referral, the interplay and dependencies between existing literacies (poor functional literacy and yet high health literacy?), differentiating between literacies, motivations and to what extent can participants themselves be mobilised as a force for change beyond 100,000 ...?

The Telehealth supplement in the same issue of HSJ notes that small companies struggle when they are offered yet more pilot projects with 30 patients.

100,000 - well that should be a good shot in the arm.

Trueland, J. (2013) The six billion dollar question, Telehealth supplement. HSJ, 14 March, 8-9.