RE: Rebecca's question on techniques for facilitating partnerships between
health care providers and adult educators.

 You might want to look at this website to read about a deliberate attempt
to bring together 50 literacy and 281 health educators in central Canada,
using the ruse of plain language training as a common "task" to incite
further collaboration. www.health.mb.literacy.ca . We designed a one-day
(realistic) workshop that included a learner presentation, statistics,
stories, plain language training and small group revisions of local
documents, as a way to encourage the group to orm relationships. We featured
a travelling trunk of resources on health literacy and outlined funding
sources. We then encouraged a problem-posing approach to next steps. While
there is a plethora of academic research on health literacy, who is actually
doing the work of raising health literacy levels, I wondered?

Take a look and let me know what you think. My answer is: the learners
themselves must become the catalysts for both systems to change. We went on
frm this project to design a Patient Prompt Card (with input from both
health and literacy educators and learners) for use in health settings, and
a Tips for working with low literacy patients card, a ClearDoc Index
checklist, a Going to the doctor booklet and facilitator's guide for use in
literacy classrooms. For information, contact Charles Moody at
cmoody at nald.ca or call 1-866-947-5757 or go to www.mb.literacy.ca and click
on "Plain Language" for info and templates.


Hello from the Florida of Canada, here in Victoria, British Columbia, where
I live now:

Marg Rose, former executive director
Literacy Partners of Manitoba

  Any suggestions this report could
recommend on facilitating partnerships between health care providers and
adult educators will be appreciated.  Thanks.