>> Welcome Anita
We’ll begin our session today with an overview of health literacy. Because librarians
aren’t healthcare providers, we suggest focusing on ways that you can help your
patients develop health literacy skills.
So, what is health literacy? Well, you can think of it as a concept similar to
information literacy. According to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,
health literacy covers every aspect of how a patient or caregiver might use health
information. Health literacy goes far beyond just the ability to read and write—
although this is important. It includes a combination of reading, listening, numeracy
skills, decision‐making, communication, and the ability to apply all of this to a
health situation.
The skills needed to be health literate should be of particular interest to librarians
because of our interest in information‐seeking behavior and information literacy. If
we frame health literacy as another flavor of information literacy, it’s easy to
imagine how librarians might contribute to healthy communities. Let’s take a quick
look at how health literacy impacts our communities.
Having low health literacy is not only detrimental to the health of an individual: it also
increases the cost of healthcare in the U.S.
People with low health literacy:
• Have poorer health and are less likely to use preventive care.
• Are more likely to be hospitalized and to stay in the hospital longer.
• Are less likely to stick to treatment and self-care plans, and make more errors in
taking medication.
These healthcare costs are associated with:
• Greater use of services to treat complications of diseases, and less utilization of
preventive care
• Higher rates of hospitalization and use of emergency rooms
Increasing health literacy might decrease healthcare costs for individuals in your
community. But health literacy affects our community members beyond just their
pocketbooks. Health information is important too. Incorrect information can cause
unnecessary panic in communities (think back to the ebola scare), or even cause a
major public health crisis. Over the past few years, cases of measles have
increased in the United States because parents have opted out of recommended vaccine sequences due to fears that vaccines might cause autism, so health literacy
is more important than ever.
Health literacy includes both navigating healthcare systems, and looking for healthrelated
information. Libraries have been on the front lines of this issue for awhile –
after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, libraries became community information
hubs for patrons navigating new online systems.
The bad news for us is that when Americans begin to look for health information,
they tend to look online, despite having access to a great information resource –
public librarians! Sound familiar? According to Pew, 59% of Americans look online
for health information each year. When we do information literacy instruction with
our patrons, there’s a real chance that they might apply those skills to a health
information search. Meanwhile, Pew’s research indicates that 8 out of 10 searches
for health information begins on a search engine – so, there’s a second way for us
to improve health literacy – by promoting reliable health resources of the kind Lydia
and Christian will present in just a few minutes.
We're going to start talking about health literacy and your communities. 
We have a growing body of evidence that public librarians can make a difference in how people search for health information. 
My previous employer, the prince George's community memorial provided free classes for older adults, giving them two weeks of guided demonstrations, with the national institute of health senior health gov website. 
This showed apartments how to access reliable health information. 
This study showed that participants' knowledge, skills, and e-health literacy efficacy increased significantly as the result of this educational offering by the library. 
So, I see a role for public libraries in helping to combat this information on childhood vaccines, spreading in our community but beyond the headlines, there are clear openings for libraries to help address health disparities, in the diverse communities we serve. 
This is where understanding past public health programs can help us imagine ways that we can serve our communities better. 
The discipline of public health is concerned with improving the health of populations, often, public health professionals accomplish this through targeted health interventions or promotions. 
These are, basically, campaigns dedicated to improving health outcomes in a specific community. 
Some you might have encountered that include healthy eating campaigns, in communities with a high rate of childhood obesity or food safety checklists in restaurants. 
So, I would like to share today two examples of health intervention, that were focused on prenatal and postnatal care, public librarians work with children and families, constantly, and in fact, we'll discuss later how some are using storytime as an opportunity to deliver health messages. 
I want to share with you some examples of health education that changed the lives of very young children. 
First, was the back to sleep campaign, which you guys almost certainly have encountered at some point because it has been around for a while. 
This campaign combated sudden infant death syndrome, also known as SIDS. 
It was visible in the 1990s. 
You probably have seen images or heard messages from this campaign which encouraged parents to place infants on their backs at bedtime. 
After research suggested fewer babies died of SIDS when put to sleep in this fashion. 
You may remember posters or TV shots, spins the reception in 1994, sids rates have decreased by almost 50%. 
This is an image showing a poster used in a Canada campaign where they have had similar results. 
So, that's a dramatic example of how advertising can increase health and how placing messages in areas where parents can see them can help to save the lives of children. 
So, I want to talk next about health disparities between communities. 
This is something that we consider constantly in public libraries. 
There are, of course, cultural factors that contribute to health behaviors and literacy, for example, breastfeeding rates are notably lower in the African-American community. 
That matters for us, as early childhood educators because it has a strong correlation to things like immune system and brain development. 
So, a really dramatic example, of self literacy intersecting with cultural differences is the incidents of spina difficult dah in Latin American children in the United States. 
Latino women have the highest rate among women of children affected by spina bifida, lower folate levels. 
They are also less likely to have heard about folic acid, known about the role in preventing birth defects or take vitamins containing folic acid, which is really unfortunate since folic acid deficiencies is one of the contributing causes to this birth complication. 
So, the national center on birth defects and developmental disabilities conducted at campaigns, specific to Latino women in the San Antonio and Miami areas in 2002, through public service AFCments and paid media outreach, they were able to increase awareness of the need for folic acid among health care providers who work with Latino women and reach the women directly. 
After this campaign, the survey demonstrated an increased use of folic acid in this community, and there was a defect in -- a decrease in the birth defect rates in the Hispanic community. 
So, you may work in a library, but the communities are more susceptible to diseases will see pockets of diabetes in certain areas of the country or certain communities, and we hope that this presentation will encourage you to think about how to position yourself and your libraries' advocates for better access to health information and in building the literacy skills that patrons will need to 
successfully use this information to improve their lives. 
and there is a lot of funding available for libraries wanting to do work in this area so I will turn this over to Christian and Lydia from the national networks of libraries and medicine who will speak about the information resources available. 
The funding, how they can help you and some examples of how libraries like yours are using the resource and is funding to improve health literacy in their communities. 
Thank you very much. 
Christian, I am looking forward to hearing from you again. 
>> Excellent. 
Thank you very much, Anita. 
It was really great to have that overview of health literacy, and we have shared some resources in chat about how you can have conversations about health literacy in your library, with your stakeholders, and great to see those examples of health literacy, improving communities. 
So we're going to go ahead and turn it over to Christian now, and if, as Christian is speaking, any of you have questions, thoughts, or ideas, please do feel free to share those in the chat. 
Welcome, Christian. 
>> Thank you. 
So now that we have had that overview of health literacy, I want to share information about training and resources provided through the national library of medicine and the national network of libraries of medicine. 
So first, a little background about the national library of medicine. 
The national library of medicine is one of the national institutes of health, and the world's largest biomedical library. 
They produce a variety of freely available and reliable biomedicine and life sentence information resources. 
These resources are not only used here in the U.S., but by millions of people around the world. 
in addition to the resources, they also provide research, development, and training in biomedical and health information technology. 
What many people may not know is that there is a variety of consumer health resources, that you and your public libraries can use to educate your community. 
These resources are free to access and use, and you have already paid for them with your Government tax dollars. 
So, with over 130 health and information data bases and websites, you can imagine it takes a lot of work to promote these resources to the right audience and provide support for outreach projects. 
The national America of libraries of med, that's where it comes in. 
the national network of libraries and medicine is a 6,000-member program that promotes and provides access to health information in communities across the country. 
The program has been around for 50 years, and is coordinated by the national library of medicine. 
There are eight regional offices known as net regional medical libraries. 
Each regional medical library has coordinators, like Lydia and myself, who are the arms and legs in our region, so, the mission of the network is to provide a health and to professional, educators and the public with equal access to health information. 
We do this by offering tree trainings, exhibiting at conference and is health fairs are and providing other resources to help make your information projects a success. 
There is a link, I think we posted that link to the network website. 
There, you can find a map, and see which regional office your community falls under. 
Interesting to note that the national network of libraries and medicines hasn't always been involved in consumer health outreach. 
Originally, the primary focus is on health professionals, so in 1997, the national library of medicine, released an online database called medline, and it was geared towards health professionals and researcher, but they discovered that consumers were using it, too. 
So, with that discovery, they looked for partners to help promote the use of the medline among consumers, and of course, public libraries were the natural coys. 
So, in 1998, the national library of medicine launched a public library's pilot project, which involved all the regional medical libraries, as well as other network partners. 
The regional medical libraries chose specific public libraries to participate in this pilot project, and we provided training for the librarians, and served as a sharing resource centers and worked with public libraries to develop their strategies. 
At the same time, this was happening, the medline plus website was launched. 
The medline plus was designed for consumers. 
So a debut with just 22 topics, has now grown and contains over 900. 
And the public libraries who were participating in this pilot project, also were involved in some resource sharing, as well. 
So, as a result of the pilot project, public libraries were then invited to become network members. 
And today, we have over 1600 public libraries who are members of our network. 
So, as I mentioned before, the mission of the network is to provide equal access to health information for everyone. 
With the public library's pilot project, serving consumers and partnering with public libraries became a priority for us. 
And was added to our mission. 
Our priorities were to include special and underserved population and is collaborations with other community-based organizations. 
Also, we added an additional member to our regional medical library, so now, each regional office has a consumer health coordinator. 
And one of our resources, we have public libraries and community partnerships web Page, and provides information to encourage partnerships between the network, public libraries, and the community organizations. 
I believe that link has been posted. 
So, in addition to consumer health and nn-lm resources, we provide support for assessments and evaluations, library advocacy, and technology. 
The regional medical library staff create many educational materials for those who wish to learn about the national library of medicine and the resources. 
We offer free face-to-face and online trainings. 
The course offerings can vary from the different regional medical libraries, but they come from a broad range of topics. 
You can learn about consumer health resources for youth, adults, seniors, LGBTQ populations, you can take a class on how to begin a program at your library, and there is also grant and proposal writing, so you can learn how to write application and is provide courses on tips and techniques to teaching with technology. 
I want to add you are not limited to just your region. 
Often, the online courses that are provided are opening to participants from other regions, as well. 
If you are interested in developing your own classes that you can teach in your library, we have open access through our course materials, and our slides and handouts for the different classes we teach are usually posted on our website. 
So, funding options also vary among the different regional medical libraries. 
Each region may have a different schedule for when funding applications are accepted. 
For more information about funding opportunities for your region, it will be necessary for you to contact your local regional medical library. 
All the libraries have email lists and blogs, so you can keep up with local updates. 
We do encourage public libraries to become members of our network. 
Although, it's not -- proprietorship is not required to access our educational classes and materials. 
I will say, it's free to join. 
And it benefits -- the benefits are allowed to apply for funding. 
You have to be a member to apply for funding to support the outreach projects. 
You also have the ability to have specialized training for your library. 
You have increased opportunities to partner with health science libraries, and you can give us input for our program for services, and we also provide a lovely certificate recognizing your library's membership and our network. 
In addition to support from the national networks of libraries and medicine, I encourage you to also look around your community, and look for agencies and organizations that you could potentially partner with. 
So, does anyone have any suggestions for potential partners? 
Please put them in the chat box. 
Think about who is in your community, what types of services and resources do they need. 
Who already is there using your library space, and parking. 
I see some of the district health offices, good, and the other partners, adult education programs, hospitals, united way, AmeriCorps. 
Awesome. 
State department, local health department, community hospitals, free health screenings, YMCA, definitely. 
Local universities, wellness groups, awesome. 
Keep putting those suggestions in the chat box, health fairs, definitely. 
6 adult outreach projects, you covered a lot of the ones that I had on my list. 
Definitely any Health Departments, hospitals, you can also look to other health science libraries, partner with libraries that focus on health information, and faith-based organizations. 
There is also a wide variety of programs with these partnerships. 
Think about health fairs, classes, displays, the options are limitless. 
And immigration, refugee organizations, that's a good one. 
So, I want you to remember, combined community effort is going to enhance any programs you think of doing, and limit itself to improved sustainable with everyone providing resources to assist the community at large. 
The bottom line is you won't know until you ask, and I am sure that each one of you already has community agencies in mind that are potential partners. 
So, next, Lydia will share information about the specific resource and is provide ideas for health related outreach programs using those resources. 
>> Excellent. 
Thank you very much, Christian, and thank you to all of you participating in chat for sharing your partnership ideas. 
It is really exciting to think about the idea of combined community effort, so thank you very much. 
We will go ahead and turn it over to Lydia now. 
Welcome, Lydia. 
>> Thank you. 
So, now, I would like to take some time to talk about some of the freely available resources from the national library of medicine that you can begin to use in help your natural library. 
I will also highlight two, NN-LM funded projects to provide examples of activities that have been successful, and before I do that, though, I would like to remind everyone that no activity that you do with your library should go unrecognized. 
Libraries of all sizes, whether you are a large branch system, whether you are a rural, an independent library, you can provide activities and programming or sometimes, just providing the access to reliable health information within your community, is going to be what you need to do. 
Remember, focus on the strength that your library has, and the resources that are available to them. 
So, hopefully, most of you have had the opportunity to use, and are very familiar with medline plus, which is a national library of medicine's consumer friendly health information resource. 
Medline plus provides you with access to easy to understand information, which focuses on diseases, conditions, and wellness issues. 
And the information of medline plus gives you that reliable and up to date timely health information any time, anywhere, and best of all, at no cost. 
Medline plus, both almost 1,000 health topics, remember Christian mentioned it started off with over 27, and now, it has information for children, teens, young adults, second language learners, caregivers, seniors, and much more. 
It also includes information on health news, health topics, drugs and supplements, and videos and tools. 
It has a directory for how to locate health organizations, which may be useful when looking for partnership opportunities as Christian mentioned earlier. 
I like to tell people to think of medline plus as their medical google. 
We have done all the good searching for you. 
And all you have to do is learn how to use it. 
Using various resources that you can find within medline plus, is going to be useful for your library, if you are interested in offering different programs, with health topic pages which cover information on disaster preparedness, nutrition, environmental health, and even pet health is one of our newest topics, there's so much to choose from. 
For adults, you could focus on a program that would teach them, where do you find reliable health information? 
And how do you evaluate what you found? 
with the affordable care act, signups, just around the corner, you may be interested in directing your library users to topic pages that focus on how to communicate more effectively with your health care provider, or wait a minute, how do I choose a doctor. 
the videos and tools section in medline plus can provide you with links to health, videos, and interactive calculators, and quizzes, questionnaires, and even online games, and these are things that you can use to add fun and interactive elements to any health programming that you might do. 
for youth librarians, if you are interested in beginning to sneak a bit of health information into your storytimes and programming, there are all sorts of topics for children and teens that you could focus on. 
Things like safety, and that includes riding your bikes to the libraries, think about summertime when children are riding skateboards and scooters and bicycling to the library. 
You could focus on how you do online safety. 
Think about teens who are using twitter and social media and all of that interaction. 
And then you could also focus on basic things like, you know, just health hazards in the home or just nutrition. 
The amount of topics that are available to you are really endless. 
So, another example of knowing that health and wellness goes well beyond just focusing on the specific diseases and conditions, is recognizing environmental health, and the national library of medicine created this wonderful resource for children, usually around ages 7-11, called tox mystery, and tox mystery allows you to teach young children about household chemical hazards. 
It's really cool because they get to play csi, and explore the different rooms within the home with toxy the cat as their sidekick, and when all the risky spots in the house were discovered, toxy dances and celebrates, and players can print a personalized certificate of completion. 
For those of you who have Spanish speaking library users, you will be pleased to know that this is also available in Spanish, and you can toggle between the languages without losing your place in the game. 
Tox mystery not only educates young learners, but provides you as library staff with a way to engage parents and even k-12 educators in your community on how to communicate home health hazards with younger children. 
For library programs, you can go to the for teacher section, which contains three ready to use lesson plans and includes student worksheets and activities, such as a word search and matching game. 
Youth librarians could read stories about home safety, or overall safety, after reading some of the stories, if you have access to a computer, i-Pads, or other tablets, and the internet, you could have kids play the tox mystery game, if you don't have enough devices to have their own, you could use tox mystery in a presentation style using one big screen, and let the group work together on 
choosing a room to explore and finding the hazards. 
So, you then end the program with print-outs with those activity sheets found in the teacher section, and for more, a more formal program, you could use the lesson plans, just something to think about. 
for those of you who work with teens, many of the national institutes of health agencies have campaigns that the national library of medicine resources link to such as the Nash institute on drug abuse, which includes it for teens. 
Prescription and over-the-counter drug abuse is a major problem across the nation, especially with our teens. 
Perhaps, you could consider running a program for caregivers and teens, using the medline plus, drugs health topic Page along with Anita's materials. 
There is an entire drug prescription program that use youth librarians, and you can use that to encourage discussions about this important issue. 
They have a peer x program that offers free resources. 
It has this really cool interactive video that allow teens to assume the role of main characters, and make decisions about whether to abuse the description drugs or not. 
So, I would encourage anyone who works with youth to review these activities and look at the help topic Page at medline plus to see what other resources that they might be able to utilize. 
Now, let's talk about another resource for our seniors. 
A question. 
How many of you have large senior populations that use the libraries? 
Feel free to post in the chat box. 
And then, how many of you have heard and/or used NIH senior health before? 
So, NIH senior health is a great resource because it makes aging related health information easily accessible. 
It was developed by the national institute on aging, in collaboration with the national library of medicine, and it features an authoritative and up to date health information from institutes and centers at the national institutes of health. 
You will finds health topics, include general background information, open captioned videos, quizzes, and frequently asked question section. 
New topics are added regularly, and it's a wonderful resource that can be used in health programming for seniors, or even for caregivers of seniors. 
We know that many young adults are caring for their elderly parents and may need assistance on where to go to find reliable information. 
So, NIH senior health serves as a resource for caregivers, as well as our aging population. 
Another question for all of you, how many of your libraries offer computer training? 
If you have access to computers, or your library already offers computer training, you may want to consider using the national institutes on aging's tool kit for trainers. 
This kit is found within NIH consider health, and it's a set of free training materials and resources that you can use to help older adults learn to find reliable online health information on their own as well as use a computer. 
It includes the nine modules that can be used with beginning, intermediate level students, and has the lesson plans, student handouts, and practice exercises, and much more. 
It's a ready-made resource for a program for seniors, something that you could do right away. 
In addition to partnering with the national library of medicine to create NIH senior health and the trainer's tool kit, the national institute on aging has created a program in the box, so to speak, that library staff can use to talk to seniors about the importance of communicating effectively with health care providers. 
This is an 18-slide, approximately 45-minute talking with your doctor presentation, which offers tips for how to prepare for medical appointments, and how to effectively discuss health concerns, including sensitive issues, how to coordinate assistance from family and friends, and make decisions with the doctor about treatment and much more. 
It has a variety of interactive activities, to involve the audience, and reinforce the important points that occur during the discussion. 
It includes the power point presentation, speaker scripts and notes, and presentation handouts, and even tips for preparing the presentation. 
How easy is that? 
So, in addition to that, the national institute on aging has a go for life campaign in which libraries are eligible to sign up as partners. 
The go for life campaign is a way to encourage seniors to continue to exercise and perform physical activity, and it has, also, free stuff. 
Did you hear me? 
Free stuff. 
Who doesn't like free stuff? 
and not just any free stuff, but quality designs, and reliable information in the form of bookmarks, exercise books, and even exercise DVDs. 
I would encourage all of you who have a large senior population, using your libraries to further investigate the information in the NIH senior health with the talking with your doctor tool kit and the go4life campaign. 
So, now that I have got you excited about just a few of our many resources, I want to take a moment to discuss two projects that were funded through the national network of libraries for medicine for health outreach. 
The first is from the middle Atlantic region and the project is called, cooking for good health and happiness. 
This was done by the Laural public library in Laural, Delaware, and for those of you who may be unfamiliar with Delaware, this is a small rural town with a population of approximately 3,700 people, the library director, Wendy Roberts, identified a health need and partnered with us at NN-LM mar to create a program to provide interactive activities and introduce older adults to healthy 
cooking techniques and free online health information resources. 
Targeting people with obesity with diabetes and other weight management concerns is what they did in a series of three, two-hour sessions which began with a demonstration of how to prepare two recipes for healthy weight loss, and a certified chef was called in to help do that portion, and they used nutritious ingredients and low-fat, low sodium cooking techniques, and then they concluded with a 
30-minute computer-based demonstration of how to find reliable health information using medline plus and NIH senior health. 
The program was limited to 20 participants, so that they could receiver the individualized instruction in healthy cooking and how to access online information. 
Now, I can see people thinking well, how much did that cost? 
Well, this was all done with a mere $1500, but it took a lot of background work from library staff in Laural. 
the second project I would like to highlight is from the mid continental region where Christian is from. 
This project is an example of how a public library, the Salt Lake county library in Utah, who partnered with Farnsworth elementary school in west valley Utah. 
This award focused on helping to facilitate a partnership between the two organizations as they wanted to help improve, help their Christmas among their students. 
They provided training on medline plus and offered hands-on training through the public library system, and in addition to those trainings, the public library was then invited to participate in the school's theme night, and steam stands for science, technology, engineering, art, and math. 
So, one project turned into a continued partnership with benefits at large to the entire community and once again, the amount of funding used for this was a mere $1500. 
So, I just shared two examples from small projects that were done using regional medical library funding. 
And you know, I just want you to recognize that there is so much strength in public libraries, and their ability to identify health needs within their communities. 
And in addition to that, their ability to engage members of the community around health outreach. 
There is so much that you can do to help your community learn to evaluate health information, access reliable health information, and teach them that there are resources that exist that they can use to help make informed decisions about their health and the health of their loved ones. 
On the larger scale, the Pennsylvania library association's 21st century's literacy initiative, called PA forward, was conceived to give information on what libraries already know and other states are also recognizing. 
That with the right support, libraries are ideally positioned to become the community centers of information, technology, and learning that will fuel educational and economic opportunities for all of our citizens. 
They know that libraries have moved far beyond just being book repositories. 
They are agile institutions serving real life needs and health information and health care is one of those. 
So, libraries can be key in empowering progress and elevating the quality of life, and P.A. libraries are using the P.A. forward brand to help improve upon literacy, which is bank literacy, information, civic and social literacy, financial literacy, and finally, health literacy. 
I encourage you to visit the P.A. forward website to gather more information on how that project is progressing. 
So, now I have shared a few resources, provided some funding examples, and a statewide initiative. 
I just wanted to help you start thinking about some things that you can do in addition to some of the great work that you are probably already doing. 
You can focus on specific disease awareness, such as Alzheimer's Disease and dementia or other mental health issues. 
You could offer programs on nutrition or sexual health or remember, medline plus has almost 1,000 topics you can choose from. 
For those libraries that order have monthly book clubs, you could begin to focus on a few books that are health related. 
There are a variety of topics that can be used for program ideas, caregiving, end of life planning, and advanced directives, hospice, and evaluating health information, health fraud, legal issues, and you see where I'm going with this? 
There is so much that you can do. 
These programs can include fun, interactive pieces, like video gaming, art projects, featuring your book clubs, including gardening, knitting clubs, and so much more. 
The possibilities are really endless. 
Your library may not be able to provide all of these types of classes or programs or ideas that we're talking about today. 
Based on time, staffing limitations, facility, space, and other conditions, however, this is an excellent time to think about partnering with other agencies, as we discussed earlier. 
Remember, no activities are too small, and sometimes, just marketing, reliable health information resources, for individuals to use on their own is, an excellent start. 
Think about health programs that you can do right now. 
Are there any things that you think you could do right now? 
if you want to learn more about resources to support consumer health outreach at your library, you may want to consider consulting the finding health and wellness at the library, a consumer health tool kit for library staff. 
This was developed as a partnership between the California state library as a national network of libraries of medicine, Pacific southwest region. 
We had Susan, the programs consultant from the state library, and Kelly hamm, the consumer health and technology coordinator who managed all aspects of this project, as well as meredith bloom who assisted in the development. 
This is a comp -- comprehensive tool kit that has information on how to use it and an introduction to core competencies, which includes information on works to obtain training and in addition to medical library options, lists health resources by type for various stages of life, different populations, and even by health topics. 
It also includes information on consumer health services and where you can find community needs assessments, data collection, and evaluation methods, and so much more. 
So you can download the tool kit at no cost on the California library website, and if your library is located in Delaware, New Jersey, New York, or Pennsylvania, feel free to shoot me an email and I will send you a copy. 
So, how many of you are aware of the summer reading 2016 theme? 
I have to say, I don't know about you, but I am excited that it is wellness, fitness, and sports. 
There are a variety of resources for all age groups relevant for summer reading 2016. 
We discussed a few today, gave you some ideas, but there are still happy more. 
Think about different activities that you can do in your community, and now is the time to think about partners that you can approach to engage in health literacy, and sports and wellness programs for your summer reading participants of all ages. 
I will be hosting, a series of works through nn-lm mar, to prepare our network members for summer reading and give ideas on what you can do with the resources available and where to locate those. 
They will run in February and March of 2016, and information on how to access the Webinars and register will be available on the NN-LM mar under upcoming classes beginning in December of 2015. 
So, I would like to end here with some food for thought. 
Remember, look to the national library of medicine for the free available, reliable resources in that your tax dollars are helping to pay for, and remember that you have a regional medical library that you can contact and ask for assistance to support any efforts that you have. 
And possibly, even connect you with partner and local agencies. 
I can't express it enough, no activity is too small. 
Thank you. 
>> Thank you very much, Lydia, those were really, really wonderful examples of NLM resources as well as really practical and concrete things that libraries have been doing to address health equity and health information needs in their communities. 
So, we have several minutes for Q&A, and I want to encourage all of our participants to feel free to take advantage of this time and share questions in the chat that you may like our panelists to respond to. 
We did have one question come true. 
I will just pull it up right now. 
Somebody was wondering if they are a researcher and would like to contribute content to NNLM resources or web pages, is there a process or application approach for that? 
Or how do you solicit new content? 
>> This is Christian. 
I know specifically for medline plus, we do have a team at the national library of medicine that focuses on this website, and curating content, so they are checking the links and making sure that everything that's on there is reliable. 
Every website has a contact us, Page, where you can submit questions, so if you have resources that you see that are not included, feel free to send the email, and they will check it out, if it matches the criteria, that was set for the resources, they will look into seeing if they can add it. 
>> Excellent. 
Thank you very much. 
And we also had another question come through about the delivery times, so if someone were to order some of the tool kits or resources that are available for order, about how long do they take to arrive. 
>> I use these resources frequently, and provide them to our network members. 
Usually, materials arrive within one to two weeks, the turnaround time is quick, so I would encourage you to make sure that you order in advance of when you have a project, just in case that they are backlogged, but so far, over the past years, I have had excellent turnaround time within one to two weeks. 
>> Excellent. 
Thank you very much. 
And I just wanted to share some examples with some of the, some of the library suggestions, and ideas that have come through chat, so the public library in Oklahoma shared they have a partnership with many agencies and organizations in their community for help literacy, and that the hospital is one of the partners in the project. 
I think that's a really great idea as to different sectors coming to go to support community health, and can, can any of you share ideas or tips or tricks that you are aware of for effective marketing of a public library's community health resources or activities, either effective marketing to partners or effective marketing to patrons? 
>> I can say that one of the things that I think is very useful is to remember to utilize your local agencies. 
Don't forget to go into your local grocery stores, your local faith-based organizations, your community agencies like your YMCAs, whatever population you are trying to market your program to, make sure that you go where they are. 
So, if you are marketing to youth, go to the corner shops where you know that they are going to, put a flyer in the local video game store you know, talk to your school librarians and you know, your health education centers and other places that you know that students and children in youth are going to, and the same for seniors. 
Go to your senior citizen's centers, talk to your servers, and see if they have someone to promote your program to, and make sure that you have a flyer or some type of link to information that you can forward to people directly so they could go ahead and promote that for you. 
>> I have to echo what Lydia said. 
Here I am based out of Omaha, Nebraska, and here in Omaha we have community care councils, so we have at least two of them from different parts of the city, and that's where a lot of the people get together from not only health organizations, but social service organizations, so by going to those meetings, I get to meet people from all over the city, and I can promote health resources. 
So, look around your city and see if you have similar setups where you can plug in and have other people help you with promotions. 
>> Excellent. 
Those are really great suggestions, and thank you very much. 
We had someone share in the chat that they did staff training with front line staff, and to be able to confidently offer to print 10 to 15 free pages from medline plus for customers with health questions, and also, kind of teach and model medline plus in the process, which I think is a really great opportunity to get reliable health information in front of consumers, especially when we know that 
there is so much unreliable information out there on the internet. 
So, that's a really excellent suggestion for empowering staff at all levels to address these topics, even if their roles may not necessarily involve direct community outreach, they can still be empowered with these reliable resources and so yeah, those are great examples. 
Jennifer posed a really great question in chat about wondering if folks are reaching out directly to health care providers. 
I think that's a really interesting question and poses an additional question for me, which is we know that health care providers and hospital systems are very, very large with multiple points of entry. 
If somebody were interested in connecting with the local health care organization, do you have any suggestions for who or what kind of role in those organizations they should think about reaching out to? 
>> I would say that in most agencies, try to contact the patient education department. 
Those are the people that work directly with the patients and do outreach. 
Another thing that you can do is try contacting your regional medical library. 
The NNLM offices are the arms and legs, and we provide training to health professionals, public healthy departments, and community health centers, and rural health and the office of aging staff throughout the states that we work with. 
So, you may be surprised that we may already have connections to people within your community, and can help facilitate some of those conversations. 
The other thing to think about is, and someone mentioned it in the chat box earlier, connect with your academic institutions. 
Sometimes, you can partner with the various departments of health sciences who have future nurses, medical technologies students, nutrition students who need service learning and outreach opportunities, and they do some amazing work. 
Also, remember to connect to other types of libraries to help you make those connections because they may be connected to the major health centers and systems and help you navigate that, also. 
>> And you can is also promote specific NNLM resources in private offices or clinics. 
There is a medline plus magazine that is freely available, so any doctor's office and even your library can sign up for a subscription and get a magazine delivered. 
We have a resource called information RX where a doctor can have a pad of paper, and they can write down certain words, or a diagnosis and refer then onto a librarian, or to the medline plus website for more information, and I will put that link for that resource in the chat box, as well. 
>> Thank you. 
Those are really wonderful suggestions. 
I know one of the things that You know, has come across our radar, and the health happens and libraries project is this idea of having effective conversations about health and wellbeing, and even though those may be personal or a sensitive conversation, there is, actually, just a lot out there, a lot of great resources that acknowledge the many social and economic and physical, environmental 
aspects that influence health, that go beyond just what is happening in a hospital or in a doctor's office, so I feel like the resources that you all have shared today can really help to facilitate those broader community health and health literacy conversations, so thank you very much for sharing them. 
We are approaching the top of the hour. 
I want to make sure that I have not missed any priority or burping questions in chat. 
I am scanning quickly. 
I think we're good, so I want to thank our amazing presenters for being here today and I want to thank our participants, for sharing their ideas in chat. 
We will be closing out the session shortly. 
We will share the archived link when it is available, and certificates of attendance will also be available within a week or so. 
So, thanks all for being here today. 
I hope you have a great afternoon. 
Bye.