So many of us have already heard of the ruling that tomato sauce on school lunch pizzas are the nutritional equivalent to cauliflowers and green beans. A catchy tune from Internet song a day sensation, Jonathan Mann.

Congress > Science?

October is right around the corner, bringing with it cooler weather, autumn leaves (at least here in New England!) and Health Literacy Month. Fifteen years ago, Health Literacy was a topic still under the radar. Today, we have conferences and courses, a growing body of literature and professional roles dedicated to the subject.

Much of the momentum behind this movement can be traced to Helen Osborne, author of Health Literacy from A to Z, creator of the Health Literacy Out Loud podcast series for healthcare professionals, and founder of Health Literacy Month. Nearing this years Health Literacy Month, I caught up with Helen to learn more about the evolution of this important and fascinating direction in health care.

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BC: I’ve heard you referred to as the “mother” of the Health Literacy movement. How do you feel about this title?

HO: Well, you’re actually the first to refer to me that way. I honestly don’t consider myself as the one who “gave birth” to health literacy. If anyone deserves that title, it would be Len and Ceci Doak. Instead, I see myself as an early adopter and advocate. My interest began in December 1995 when I read my first-ever article about health literacy (published in JAMA, by Williams et al). At the time, I was working as an occupational therapist on a psychiatric unit in a community hospital in Boston. I read in the article that more than half of the adults in this country struggle to understand written health information. I looked at my patients. I looked at my handouts. And immediately I knew this was so. I’ve since made it my mission to help figure out ways to communicate health information more clearly.

BC: What is the history behind Health Literacy Month?

HO: Soon after I started my own Health Literacy Consulting business, I joined the New England chapter of the National Speakers Association. In one of our programs, a speaker shared how she started her own “holiday.” I thought that might work for health literacy, too. So without really having a clue what I was getting into, I posted a message to a health literacy listserv asking, “Health Literacy Month. How does that sound to you?” And to my surprise, nearly 50 people replied, saying something like, “Great idea. What are YOU going to do?” And so began Health Literacy Month. That was in 1999. Health Literacy Month has been going strong ever since with local and national awareness-raising efforts taking place in the United States, Canada, overseas, and online.

BC: Why October?

HO: I actually gave this a lot of thought. Since I envisioned Health Literacy Month as open to everyone worldwide, I chose October as it tends to have good weather and not many competing holidays. Also, in the U. S. it is just before elections. My figuring was that politicians would be happy to have photos taken with people doing good deeds — such as with those advocating for clear health communication. And one more reason is that October has a lot of health-related “holidays.” You can find an extensive listing in “Chase’s Calendar of Events.”

BC: What are you planning for this year’s Health Literacy Month?

HO: My biggest news is the publication of the Second Edition of my book, “Health Literacy from A to Z.” You can learn more at http://www.jblearning.com/catalog/9781449600532/. Ever since Health Literacy Month began, the fall has been a very busy time for me and others in health literacy. This year, I have lots and lots of speaking engagements scheduled from mid-September through mid-November. That’s very good, indeed.

BC: Where do you see the field of Health Literacy heading?

HO: The field of health literacy has changed so much in the last 10-15 years. While years ago few people ever heard the term or knew why it mattered, today health literacy is central to many national and international health policies, innovations, and programs. While I’m delighted that the field is finally getting the attention it deserves, I hope that sometime soon there will be consensus as to its scope and definition. To me, that is key in sustaining the health literacy momentum.

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Many thanks to Helen for squeezing this Q&A into her busy schedule!

The following is a guest post from Elizabeth Brotherton of PreventObesity.net reviewing day 1 of the recent Childhood Obesity Conference held in San Diego, CA. More photos from the event can be found on their Facebook page. See here for Part 2 of the review.

Aside from First Lady Michelle Obama, there aren’t too many famous folk working to reverse childhood obesity. So when Sam Kass, the handsome White House assistant chef and key player in Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign, gave a keynote speech to kick off the 6th Biennial Childhood Obesity Conference in San Diego on Tuesday, he drew quite the crowd.

And some of Kass’s remarks came as a bit of a shock to some in the audience.

Kass spoke before a packed ballroom of 1,800 or so attendees, talking a lot about Let’s Move!, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s new “MyPlate” food icon and proposed federal principles guiding companies to advertise only healthy foods to kids. But Kass also told the crowd that for real change to happen, private sector companies and corporations must be involved.

Chef Sam Kass

“This issue will not be solved unless we engage and really work with the private sector,” Kass said.

Kass’s comments came after an audience member suggested the administration work to ban sodas from hospitals, which she compared to allowing patients to smoke. While Kass didn’t dismiss the suggestion, telling the crowd local communities should make decisions that are right for them, he urged people to keep a broad perspective when looking at reversing obesity.

“This issue is not caused by one drink,” Kass said. “It isn’t.”

Those remarks seemed to shock some conference goers, many of whom are working to limit access to sugar sweetened drinks, especially in schools. But it didn’t squash Kass’s warm reception, as dozens of people swarmed him after his speech, including many people who wanted a photo with the dashing White House chef.

Kass also, it turns out, has a bit of a bromance with Robert Ross, president and CEO of the California Endowment. Ross explained in a speech that when he first came to the White House to talk about childhood obesity a few years ago, he planned on meeting with top administration officials. Instead, he was told he would meet with the chef.

“You want me to go see the cook?” Ross recalled saying.

But Ross and Kass hit it off, and Ross even joked, “I don’t know if it was a man crush…”

“We connected,” Ross added. “This guy was not just a cook. He had a passion and a vision.”

Other notes from the conference:

• Those proposed food marketing principles Kass mentioned in his speech have been the talk of the conference, with panelists urging conference-goers to write to the Federal Trade Commission to comment on them. The deadline to do so is July 14 (PreventObesity.net actually has an easy way to submit comments to the FTC)

• Being an obesity conference, there are plenty of opportunities for conference-goers to engage in physical activity during their trip. Exercise and yoga classes, power walks and runs are being sponsored every morning, and physical activity sessions are being led by fitness experts during the day. There’s also a hilarious sign posted next to a set of elevators urging people to take the nearby stairs instead.
  

  Say No to the Escalator

• Technology-wise, a lot of emphasis is being placed on the use of GIS mapping to track various issues related to obesity. One group in California, for example, shared in a conference session how they used the technology to find out where women who were eligible but not receiving the Women Infants and Children (WIC) funding were living. After they mapped that, they opened WIC clinics in those areas to better reach those communities in-need.
• Dozens of young people also are attending the conference, and several shared their personal stories at a session held Wednesday morning. One high schooler is working to bring fresh, clean water to her campus, while others are using photography to get the word out about everything from unhealthy nutrition to food deserts to the importance of local gardens. 

   

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  Elizabeth Brotherton is a senior writer and editor for PreventObesity.net. She is tasked with creating original content for the project, including on its blog and weekly newsletter, The Inside Track. Brotherton previously wrote the “Heard on the Hill” column for Roll Call and has written for a number of publications, including the Orange County Register, Press-Enterprise and the Almanac of the Unelected.

Guest post from Silje Lier, MPH of Dept. of Health & Human Services (HHS). More info on Silje after the post -

The Department of Agriculture was the source of many tweets and mobile videos last Thursday as we waited in anticipation for First Lady Michelle Obama, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, and Surgeon General Regina Benjamin to unveil the federal government’s new food icon, MyPlate. The icon serves as a reminder to help consumers make healthy food choices by dishing out (no pun intended) more fruits and vegetables and smaller portions of protein and grains.

Out With the Old, In With the New

For the last two decades, when Americans thought about nutrition and dietary guidelines, they have most likely conjured up an image of the iconic food pyramid. At least that’s what I was taught in school. The Food Guide Pyramid, which shelved basic food groups in hierarchical order based on recommended serving amount, was replaced in 2005 by MyPyramid, in an effort to simplify the illustration and to promote physical activity. But it was still too complicated.

Here are my simple take-aways from first glance at the new icon:

• Make half your plate consist of fruits and vegetables;
• Avoid oversized portions;
• Eat your favorite foods in moderation; and
• Remember to balance your calories.

From what I overheard, post-conference buzz and critique about the new icon focused on its neglect of significant nutrition hot-spots from the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010, i.e. Why isn’t the grains component labeled whole grains? How does the plate address sodium intake? What about beverages?

MyPlate is a visual cue about eating healthy, but specific messages and the 10 Tips Education Series are housed on the new site ChooseMyPlate.gov. And according to its press release, USDA will introduce a new online tool this fall, for users to personalize and manage their dietary and physical activity behaviors.

Food Guidelines for the Future

Besides her role as the First Lady of our nation, we now also know Michelle Obama as the face of the preventive Let’s Move! initiative. But during the press conference, she spoke as a parent, saying, “When mom or dad comes home from a long day of work, we’re already asked to be a chef, a referee, a cleaning crew. So it’s tough to be a nutritionist, too.”

The new icon is not just a colorful info-graphic; it’s a new way of thinking about what we eat and what we serve others.

What are your thoughts on the new icon?

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Silje Lier is a Communication and eHealth Fellow at the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. You can follow her on Twitter at @sealya.

Last week at the Games for Health 2011 conference, Dr. Doris Rusch (MIT-Singapore GAMBIT Game Lab) presented her groundbreaking game, Elude. Elude is not like most games – its intention is not to “play” but just the opposite. A beautifully designed metaphor, Elude is a  tool for people supporting others with depression.

For people who have never experienced it before, depression is difficult to understand. It is not simply sadness, as many may think; it is more akin to an all-encompassing hopelessness, a failure to connect to or derive meaning from the outside world. By tapping into the experiential aspects of the video game medium, Elude’s metaphoricalmodel for depression serves to bring awareness to the realities of depression by creating empathy with those who live with depression every day. (GAMBIT Labs)

Sitting in the dark hall, the music, scenes, and up- and downward visual pull of the game quickly sent my emotions astir. This trailer gives you a taste.

Elude is designed for the clinical setting, as part of a psycho-education package for friends and family of those living with depression. As I sat imagining this play out between clinician, client and family, my mind wandered to health literacy and realized that this type of education doesn’t fit in our current definitions. According to Healthy People health literacy is “the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services to make appropriate health decisions.” What about the ability to empathize with others’ and their health struggles?

This has caused me to contemplate our current definitions of health literacy. Would the inclusion of empathy be too complex? Does it even make sense in the context of health literacy? As a society we certainly push for awareness of health conditions, with new awareness days/weeks/months cropping up regularly. Do we strive to understand though?

What do you think? Are we too restrictive in our definition of health literacy? Please leave me your comments and links to conversations I may have missed!

- Bridgette

Bridgette Collado is a free-lance health communication consultant and recent addition to the Pulse + Signal team. You can find her on twitter as@bcollado.

This week at Games for Health, I had the pleasure of meeting Tara Cousineau, PhD, founder and CEO of BodiMojo, Inc. Tara is a clinical psychologist and eHealth innovator. Bodimojo.com, the flagship product, is a health engagement platform for teens leveraging web and mobile technologies. When I learned about this online health community, I thought about the impact it could have on the health literacy of the teens and promptly asked Tara for an interview. I hope you find our discussion as inspiring as I did!

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BC: What was your inspiration for creating BodiMojo?

TC: The inspiration for “BodiMojo” arose from the need to personalize health information and skills to the individual teenager during a time that is pretty chaotic, demanding and distracting.

Originally, BodiMojo was developed as an obesity prevention program, to motivate teens to eat more fruits and veggies and get out and exercise. But we learned quickly that those goals are pretty much non-starter with this age group!

We talked with many teenagers to get a good understanding of what mattered to them about their wellbeing and what a novel online platform might contain to keep them engaged and educated. Teens also helped us to name the program – and it’s been great to hear over and over, “BodiMojo. That’s a cool name!” And really, that’s our mission: to make health cool for teens; to make it about being your best self, inside and out. We definitely take a holistic view.

BC: What do you mean ‘holistic’?

TC: Teens’ bodies are changing throughout the high school years; their brains are in a hormonal soup and undergoing rapid cognitive changes. Think of the teens you know (orthe one you were): they can be spaced out, clumsy, moody, stubborn, ditzy, giddy, and sleepy and so on.

On the social side, fitting in is paramount. How they look and feel is centerstage. “Health” is not compartmentalized like it might be for grownups. While teens may be getting many of the critical prevention messages for high-risk behaviors (e.g.,safe sex, no drugs, no alcohol), they aren’t actually getting health information that is meaningful to where they’re at in the moment based on their current behaviors or attitudes.

BC: Health literacy is not only a hot topic in public health but also an important aspect for consuming health messages and translating them into behavior change. One’s health literacy starts to take shape early in life and is influenced by a multitude of factors. Have you approached any aspects of BodiMojo with health literacy in mind?

TC: Health literacy and media literacy is top of mind for us. The very nature of adolescence is that it is a time of transition. Teaching to the task, rather than teaching to the individual teen, is problematic because the message will only get through to whoever is paying attention at the time or who cares about the issue. For example, a high school student might get a nutrition module in gym class (if they even have PE), or a human reproduction lesson in a 9th grade biology class – that may be it over the entire course of high school! And really you have to teach health messages again and again, because a 13-year old girl is dealing with different issues than a 17-year old guy. There are many missed opportunities when it comes to health ed.

BC: What’s unique about BodiMojo?

TC: What we do that is new and different is that we that tailor health information. In their “My Page” teens can create tap into their “Health Mojo” through a series of self-assessments called “BodiMojo Snapshots.” These are customized reports in nutrition,fitness, body image, and stress. The feedback is based on gender, age, BMI and whether a teen is on a sports team. Over time we want to drill down even more, so the messages can be as relevant as possible. Teens can then set goals, track them and earn points as they engage. They can share their goals on their Facebook profiles and send themselves reminders via SMS. By personalizing the information we are helping teens to be more literate, or mindful, of their own health and that of others.

BC: The Games for Health conference was held this week in Boston and it seems gaming is gaining momentum in this space. Who designed the games on BodiMojo, how have teens responded to them and what plans do you have for additional health gaming?

TC: Our funding is from a National Institutes of Health Small Business Innovative Research grant, and we pulled together a team of programmers, designers and writers as well as health experts and teens, to create the platform. We then tested it in 4 area high schools in  Massachusetts, suburban and urban. Our results were very positive. For girls in particular, exposure to the BodiMojo over 4 weeks significantly improved their attitudes about their own body image relative to those who did not get the program (results will be presented at a scientific conference in the Fall). So we tapped into some of the issues that are important to teens, but not typically addressed in obesity prevention or wellness campaigns. From what our teens tell us we also know that under-addressed issues are sleep and stress. And if you think about it, you really want a teen to be well rested and emotionally balanced first and foremost!

We hope that tackling the psychosocial issues will then nudge teens in to making healthy decisions related to healthy food choices, physical activity, and stress management, among other behaviors. BodiMojo is going mobile next. We’re creating a mobile browser version and an iPhone app. Stay tuned. In the meantime, send teens to the site and check out some interactive tools: Headspin, Body Talk and  Mood Cloud.

BC: How are you going to promote BodiMojo?

TC: Good question! An issue that came up at the Games for Health conference was around getting research and academic inspired programs to the public and what business models could work. We plan to integrate with body sensor devices so that we can provide real-time feedback for teens. We’re set up nicely to be the “teen wrap-around” for wellness devices. Importantly, we believe that parents and caregivers will want to support their teens in taking healthy action, through a health allowance program,for instance, and through communities or schools with shared goals. We’re talking to strategic partners now and welcome a conversation with others!

BC: For those who haven’t yet checked out www.bodimojo.com, would you give them your elevator pitch?

TC: Really, the pitch is a single question: What’s YOUR bodimojo?

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You can find out more about BodiMojo at www.bodimojo.com.

Help spread the word!  Like BodiMojo at www.facebook.com/bodimojo and follow them at twitter.com/bodimojo. And while you’re at it, check out their YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/bodimojo.

- Bridgette

Bridgette Collado is a free-lance health communication consultant and recent addition to the Pulse + Signal team. You can find her on twitter as @bcollado.

The 7th annual Games for Health conference began today in Boston. This conference is one of several going on now as part of Games Beyond Entertainment Week, organized by Digitalmill, Inc. and is supported by the Pioneer Portfolio of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Today’s pre-conference line-up did not disappoint – I’m only sorry that I couldn’t attend every presentation! From accessibility to sensors, prevention to rehabilitation, medical education to research, the day was packed with awesome speakers, great design and a whole lot of inspiration. Here are just a few of today’s take-aways…

1. Gaming has the potential for application in a long list of healthcare topics.

Continua Health Alliance talked about the many health gaming opportunities, including integrative health activities, simple secondary input, chronic disease care and diagnostic gaming.

2. Incentives work.

Incentivizing gaming was a practice and recommendation across the board. Continua Health Alliance provided that competitions are the greatest motivators (the speaker referenced Partners Healthcare data not available in the public domain). Group competitions were also a hot topic – they are not only highly motivating but add a social dynamic different from head-to-head rivalry. Creativity and supplying options were also mentioned as important factors in considering incentives, for example, allowing one to apply credit to a cause, or trade it in for mobile minutes, may be more motivating than cash for some.

3. Users who share their success do better.

Bill Sabram of MeYou Health talked to this point, touting the power of connection. In Monumental, MeYou Health’s free iPhone app that “takes you to the top of virtual monuments as you climb real stairs,” users can share results with other users through social plug-ins, and these users are more successful.

Tomorrow looks just as promising! So, look for more conference coverage tomorrow on Pulse + Signal and follow the hashtag #G4H11 for live news.

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Bridgette (a.k.a. @bcollado)

Last July, the Ashoka Changemakers organization in partnership with the Amgen Foundation, launched a competition around patient empowerment that spanned the globe. For 20 years, the Foundation has been working with organizations to increase visibility of innovations around this area. I wrote about it last year on the blog with some added thoughts on the e-patient revolution. Since then, the competition closed out and announced three winners of the $10,000 prize in December.

I decided it would be a great idea to interview the winners of the prize and give you all some additional insight into what they are doing and how they came about. These are the people who are thinking outside the box and putting their ideas to work to impact the health of their communities.

My first interview of the winners comes from good friend Alexandra Carmichael and CureTogether. I first met Alex a few years ago at the Health 2.0 conference and was thoroughly impressed and intrigued with what she had been doing around patients empowerment. Needless to say, I was also pretty happy that she was won of the winners.

Pulse/Signal: Give us a brief overview of CureTogether (e.g. how it came together, it’s current purpose) and tell us why patient empowerment is so important to you?

CureTogether started in 2008 after I had struggled with a decade of chronic pain. It was so hard for me to find information that I wanted to share what I had learned with other patients in a structured, quantitative way. So my partner Daniel Reda built CureTogether, starting with 3 conditions, and it started spreading by word of mouth – today we have over 500 condition communities, all added by patients themselves. Empowering patients is so important to me because so much needless suffering can be avoided if patients are able to share what they know and have multiple sources of information to make good health decisions.

The purpose, or problems we’re trying to solve at CureTogether are:

1. Under-funded Diseases. The most popular conditions at CureTogether are chronic diseases, mostly affecting women, that are poorly understood and inadequately funded by research granting agencies. Our top conditions include depression, migraine, vulvodynia, and chronic fatigue syndrome. CureTogether helps people share their experiences and eventually do their own research into these conditions, amplifying research efforts to find successful treatments.

2. Embarrassed Isolation. For acute, terminal conditions, patients are supported and more likely to be open about their conditions. For chronic, sensitive, and rare diseases, there is more of a stigma associated with them, so patients suffer in silence. CureTogether provides an anonymous place to connect, and we often hear “I thought I was the only one with these symptoms!”

3. Unverified Anecdotes. Patients often have to rely on low-quality information around them — on the web and in under-served medical communities. We hope to bring some rigor to anecdote.

Pulse/Signal: Can you give us some examples about how you know it’s been a value add to the community? Any success stories of impact?

When we get wonderful quotes like the following, I feel like we are definitely adding value to the community. Now the challenge will be to reach as many people as possible.

“CureTogether seriously changed my life.” — Christopher

“This site is really a fantastic idea!! Absolutely magnificent!” — Mayke

“Crowdsourcing health knowledge to find cures – Terrific!” — David

“I just wish doctors got this information and applied it…” — Amanda

“I thought I was the only one with these kinds of symptoms.” — Faren

“Your website is helpful beyond words… I feel connected to people who are suffering from the same symptoms as myself. You have made me feel empowered…” — Pam

Pulse/Signal: How will the Ashoka prize and recognition help you advance your work?

The Ashoka prize is a great honor that will bring added credibility and exposure to CureTogether, which will help us to spread the word to more people who can be helped by the data we’re gathering and the discoveries we’re making. Two recent examples of the kinds of discoveries we are making as more people join are the recent discovery of a migraine biomarker that predicts a negative reaction to the drug Imitrex (http://curetogether.com/blog/2011/01/11/migraine-symptom-predicts-response-to-imitrex/), and a chart of popular vs. effective treatments for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (http://curetogether.com/blog/2011/02/03/surprising-new-data-what-really-helps-patients-with-chronic-fatigue-syndrome/).

Pulse/Signal: I firmly believe that the spotlight is on people such as yourself, entrepreneurs/changemakers, to make a difference in the health of communities. What are your thoughts on competitions like this to gather together and reward new ideas, specifically in health?

I think competitions are a great way to gather and highlight ideas that have yet to be broadly discovered, but that can have a massive impact. With health in particular, competitions can encourage more people to create solutions for the public good, instead of focusing only on financial gain.

Pulse/Signal: How do you see CureTogether improving patient empowerment in the next 5 years?

In 5 years, CureTogether will have many more research partnerships and be translated into multiple languages, so anyone with a cell phone will be able to access this patient-driven health information in their own language. If there is no physical medical facility nearby, the online health world can help ease the burden of suffering. Also, with the level of data we will have in 5 years, we will be able to publish discoveries daily with statistical power that is on par with traditional forms of research. So patients will really start to benefit from the investment of their information.

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Thanks so much Alex for the opportunity to dive a bit deeper into your mission. For those of you interested in Alexandra’s work in the QuantifiedSelf movement (see recent blog post on behavior change support), she is putting together a fabulous conference in the next few months that you may want to check out.

Stay tuned for the next installment of the series with the SMS Now!

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, health literacy is defined as the following:

Health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process and understand basic health information needed to make appropriate health decisions and services needed to prevent or treat illness.

In my very first courses in public health while in college, I learned about health literacy as it pertained to flyers and brochures for the community around tuberculosis. Back then, to me that meant if a community member would be able to understand the bumps that appeared on their arm after they took a TB test. After that though, I never really gave it much thought until early in my career I began working on a database of diseases and conditions for patients to understand. From print media to the Web – a database for understanding what the doctor told you and/or what procedure was going to be performed on you. Once again, it simmered in my mind for a bit and then not much thought after.

Fast forward to earlier this month.

A huge gathering of health information and communication professionals/enthusiasts on Twitter re-opened, no no…exploded once again the issue of health literacy for me. Put together by the folks at HealthFinder.gov, the Twitter chat was hosted by Cynthia Bauer – CDC’s Senior Health Literacy Advisor who asked the question: “How can we improve health literacy?” followed by going through the new National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy. As great as that concept was, I don’t think anyone involved could have predicted what really went down.

Even before the structured discussion with Ms. Bauer began, I saw that numerous people decided to begin the conversation themselves around health literacy using the now official hashtag of #healthlit. As the minutes went by with Bauer highlighting the plan, more and more people joined the conversation until it was a swirling tsunami of brilliant thinkers and passionate individuals asking questions, answering questions and providing takeaway information on how to improve health literacy across a variety of platforms. Sitting at my desk, my eyes widened in happiness as I got to see the community that I’m so passionate about, come alive with crowdsourced goodness and resource sharing. Links and recommendations abounded. It was an hour (and more!) of greatness – s something I don’t think the folks at HealthFinder.gov, HHS or even the CDC could have expected. And that’s a good thing. Big shouts to Myrna Morales (@SeerGenius), Patricia Anderson (@pfanderson), LaDonna Coy (@coyenator), Alex Bornkessel (@socialbttrfly), Craig LeFebvre (@chiefmaven), Nikki (@eagledawg) and a whole host of other folks that I was happy to see show up.

I got a chance to catch up with Linda Harris of the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP), who also co-wrote a great summary post with Bauer, about a question I had:

How does health literacy play a part in applying mobile technology to public health information? Getting past the digital divide for at risk communities through text messaging or other mobile health content?

Here is her very encouraging response:

Mobile interactive technology (such as texting) has great potential to reach users with limited health literacy skills, and the team at ODPHP is actively exploring how we can use mobile to communicate important health messages. Recent mobile campaigns, such as TXT4BABY and KNOWIT have shown promise in this regard.

That said, the digital divide is still very much a reality and more research is needed to assess the reach and impact of mobile health. We are also beginning to work across agencies to explore and define the concept of “digital literacy.” Our priority at ODPHP is to ensure that health information – no matter where it is presented – is easy to read and understand, accessible and actionable. All of our initiatives are also grounded in user-centered design to help ensure that we meet the needs of our target populations.

Many of the groups receptive to the use of text messaging for health, such as adults below the poverty threshold and immigrants and refugees, are also likely to have limited health literacy skills. We know that non-White cell phone owners use their phones to send/receive text messages at significantly higher rates than Whites, making this a particularly important medium for reaching non-White populations. As many of your readers may know, Pew Internet recently published their “Mobile Health 2010” report. According to the report, Latino cell phone users are significantly more likely than other groups to use their cell phones to look for health information: 25% do so, compared to 15% of non-Hispanic whites.

We continue to consider this and other research, along with original formative research with our end-users, as we explore the most effective channels for reaching people with actionable and engaging health content.

I’m really excited to see what the future holds for health literacy in the digital age and how it can still be relevant in leveling the playing field for public health. So many innovations are occurring and great ideas are flourishing but if we fail the people who need improvements the most then what have we really accomplished?

I think this time around, health literacy will be sticking around in the ‘mind of Andre’ for quite some time.

Recently I had the privilege to attend the 3^rd annual Sex::Tech conference hosted by ISIS, inc. The conference was held in San Francisco, CA which is appropriate given the amount of work they have done in the area in regards to sexual and public health. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Sex::Tech (now, now – don’t blush too hard) is a meeting of the minds surrounding issues related to sexual health, technology/new media and young people. It was absolutely mind blowing to listen to the current state of sex education and related issues straight from the mouths of the young people that are being affected. Not from adults who think they know what’s going on – definitely a difference there. I mean seriously, I just turned 28 and I felt like I was a senior citizen with the things I was hearing. With all due respect, no 300 page CDC report could touch this kind of community/demographic insight.

Day one of the conference kicked off with a panel discussion consisting of college age students discussing their experiences with sex education growing up and relevant issues of how to reshape sex education in the classrooms of the future. Topics ranged from mixing boys/girls together for classes to incorporating attention to the growing number of openly identifying LGBT teens. No matter where you sit on the spectrum of acceptance – you cannot ignore the statistics and the issues taking place with our young people today regarding HIV/AIDS and other STD infections. The mere fact that many young people don’t consider oral sex as…sex….is a problem. As my college human sexuality professor would tell us: “Anything you can put something, you can get something”.

The rest of the day consisted of breakout sessions and a plenary session from sponsoring organizations discussing what they do and the relevant issues they are working hard diligently on. One of the organizations I was really proud of was MTV for becoming part of the engagement and conversation surrounding an issue that affects their core audience. Jason Rzepka, VP of Public Affairs at MTV Networks, (who also won a PopTech award that morning) was there to discuss their collaboration with the Kaiser Family Foundation (also in attendance) on their GYT (Get Yourself Tested/Talking) campaign. The day ended with an awesome wine tasting meet and greet at the Press Club in downtown SF. I hung out with one of my favorite people, Amy Jussel of Shaping Youth for most of the conference – this is definitely a relevant conference for her as she focuses on the effects of marketing and media on young people. Check out her three part interview with Deb Levine, Director of ISIS, Inc.

Alongside my friend Leslie Bradshaw, I gave a presentation looking at online engagement strategies for public health:

I was also really excited to get Deb on camera as she closed out the conference with some great thoughts.

And finally an interview with ISIS’ Youth Marketing Manager who is very into public health and new ideas, Margaret Lucas:

I thought the event was well organized with great opportunities to learn about fantastic campaigns and projects that are impacting the landscape of public health through sexual education innovation. I’m glad that this conference is moving forward because for alot of sexual health education and prevention initiatives, we have not been paying attention to the people that are in the middle of the problems. Sex::Tech allows an opportunity for those working in the field to hear about the experiences of young people and how to better shape programs for the future.