Hi Everyone,

This is the beginning of our yearly cycle on the discussion lists, and I want to welcome you all to another year of discussing the many aspects of health literacy, sharing resources, and being part of this online community!

At this time, I want to tell you about some things I am planning for the coming year, and also get some feedback from you about what you would like to see discussed on the list. Based on the most popular discussion strands from last year, I have made a tentative list of discussions to plan with guest speakers, but I welcome feedback on other issues you would like to discuss formally with experts, or informally within our community.

Plans for this year:
•Discussion with guest speakers about using pictures in health education materials for low literacy audiences.
•Panel discussion with health providers, adult literacy educators and adult learners/patients to talk about the communication challenges between providers and patients with lower literacy skills.
•Discussion about the results of the NAAL data, and what implications it has for our work.
•Two more Health Literacy Discussion List Newsletters, pared down from the last version to include only key highlights from the list's activities.
•Continue to document the following on the ALE Wiki: resources, discussions, promising practices (accounts of successful and innovative projects or collaborations being done to address health literacy issues), and student/patient stories about communication or navigation challenges within the health system.
•Encourage new members to introduce themselves to the list so we know more about our community and the skills, interests, and professional capacities we have here.

Here is what I'd like to hear from you all:
•What do you think of the above activities?
•What other topics would you like to discuss?
•Do you have any other suggestions for the list?

Please reply to me directly (jmckinney at worlded.org) or you can respond to this message. In order to save you from too many messages, I will not post every response to this request (unless you say to), but I will compile the responses and post one summary. Please respond by November 1st, if possible.

We have over 600 subscribers on this list with a variety of needs, interests, expertise, and information to share! I am excited for the year ahead, and hope to hear from as many of you as possible to help make this discussion list useful to all of you.

All the best,

Julie


Julie McKinney
Discussion List Moderator
World Education/NCSALL
jmckinney at worlded.org