healthliteracy

Health Literacy

MedCast_Podcast Logo_January 2023 (1).jpg

Health literacy is defined as an individual's ability to find, understand, and use health information to make informed health related decisions about themselves. Literacy Connections has worked with interns, pursuing a career in the medical field, and partnered with local health care organizations to advocate for the need of increased health literacy in Wayne County.

Wellness for Wayne

My name is Jamie Stephens, and I am a nurse (RN) with over ten years of experience.

My name is Jamie Stephens, and I am a nurse (RN) with over ten years of experience. Currently, I am attending East Carolina University for my Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP), with a focus on becoming an adult-gerontology nurse practitioner. I live, love and work here in Wayne County and want to improve my education to serve my community better. I also volunteer as a tutor at Literacy Connections and see first-hand how low literacy impacts a person’s health. Through my work as a nurse, I have recognized the barriers to patient compliance with doctor’s medical orders. A combination of not enough time between patients and doctors, along with the low rates of literacy in Eastern North Carolina, leaves patients repeatedly failing to manage their health conditions. My goal is to ENGAGE, EDUCATE, and EMPOWER people through a new pilot program hosted by Literacy Connections.

Wellness for Wayne is part of my doctorate DNP project, which is an 18-month educational study with the intent of creating a new program that will address and improve health literacy in our community. In 2014, the University of North Carolina partnered with other institutions to map a predictive health literacy model.

Pictured: Interns Jamie & Zoe

This predictive model approximates that 37% of Wayne County, North Carolina adults have basic or below basic health literacy skills.

Studies clearly show that limited health literacy negatively impacts health outcomes including decreased use of primary prevention, mismanagement of chronic conditions, misunderstanding of nutrition labels, medication errors, and increased healthcare costs. Additionally, individuals with low health literacy have a higher risk of hospitalizations.

To help people navigate the confusing medical world of health literacy, I created five videos with the assistance of intern Zoe MacDonald, a student attending the School of Math and Science.

Screen Shot 2023-12-18 at 4.16.53 PM.png

During the implementation stage of my project, staff, students and volunteers at Literacy Connections are asked to watch the videos and complete an anonymous survey about their ability to understand, process, and find usefulness from the videos. I will compile the data and write a thesis to complete my DNP program at ECU. I have been very pleased to see that people are willing to participate, and early results show that participants are asking for even more health topics. These videos and future health literacy videos will provide a source of reliable information by a nurse or doctor that can be accessed in the privacy of an individual’s home away from the fast-paced doctor’s office.

Literacy Connections is honored to have Jamie in our learning center this year to bring awareness and explore possible solutions to low health literacy in Wayne County. Literacy is so much more than reading and writing. It is providing education that empowers people to move confidently to a healthier, more prosperous future.