Agenda-Monday, October 30, 2023

Monday, October 30 • 10:40am – 11:30am EST

The way we describe risks and benefits – percentages, frequencies, graphics, or words – makes a big difference to our audience. We might want to reassure patients, but present the numbers in a way that raises concerns. We might want them to compare two probabilities, while inadvertently selecting number types that are cognitively challenging to compare. In this talk, we’ll review some of the evidence about how different formats for numbers influence risk perception and comprehension, with the goal of making our communications more effective.

Learning objectives:

• Reformat probability numbers in several formats (including percentages, 1 in X frequencies, rates, and odds)
• Articulate several communication goals that can be affected by the format of probability numbers
• Describe the different impacts of presenting a probability as “1 in 100” or as “1%”

Monday, October 30 11:30am – 1:00pm EST

By defining organizational health literacy—the “degree to which organizations equitably enable individuals to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others”—Healthy People 2030 set the stage for identifying and implementing impactful interventions demonstrating how health literacy is integral to equity, safety, and quality. This provides an opportunity to extend evidence-based safety and quality methods to define, describe, and quantify health literacy-related communication safety events and to identify and implement health literacy-informed prevention and mitigation strategies. It also offers a tangible health system intervention for health equity since groups at risk for health disparities, including racial/ethnic minorities, those who do not identify English as their primary language, and people in poverty, are at higher risk for limited health literacy and associated poorer health outcomes. This session will summarize the relationship between health literacy and safety, quality, and equity, then discuss two large pediatric health systems’ approaches to health literacy-related safety events. Panelists will: describe the importance of organizational health literacy to safety, quality, and equity; illustrate approaches to identifying, quantifying, describing, and using health literacy-related safety events in health care settings; and demonstrate potential applications of how health literacy-related safety event data and findings may inform approaches to preventing serious safety events. This will be followed by questions/answers and discussion among Session participants and Panelists.

Monday, October 30 11:30am – 1:00pm EST

M-POHL, the World Health Organization (WHO) Action Network on Measuring Population and Organizational HL, was established in 2018 and has 23 participating member countries and five observer countries from the WHO European Region, as well as observers from Asia. The main objective of M-POHL is to provide high-quality data on population and organizational HL and developing policy recommendations based on data generated. M-POHL places HL on the international and national agenda and offers high-level international exchange on the latest HL developments, data, evidence, and experiences to improve research and national policies. Such agenda-setting for HL is needed more than ever, as the health agenda is becoming increasingly challenging due to several dynamic trends, including the health threats posed by the climate crisis, the opportunities and challenges of digital transformation, pandemics such as COVID-19, mental health challenges in the context of the current global multi-crisis, and the rapidly growing medical and health knowledge and technologies. M-POHL’s three current projects will be presented. The added value and goal of the panel is to convey how the M-POHL projects contribute to the much-needed evidence base for HL and sustainably place HL on the national and international research, policy, and practice agendas. It will discuss what can be learned from such an initiative in other countries.

Monday, October 30 • 1:30pm – 2:30pm EST

This panel will discuss currently available measures of health literacy, how to select the optimal measure for a study based upon study attributes, and challenges to the field and potential solutions and opportunities for improvement.

Monday, October 30 • 1:30pm – 2:30pm EST

Health literacy and cultural competency go hand-in-hand, but while clear practice guidelines exist for service delivery, what makes health communication media more "culturally resonant" or meaningful remains largely in the research domain. Join this group to contribute to the formulation of practical guidelines that could be used to develop or evaluate materials for culturally diverse audiences.

Monday, October 30 • 2:30pm – 4:00pm EST

This panel showcases current initiatives aimed at getting adult learners connected and engaged with today’s digital health eco-system. Panelists highlight the voices and experiences of adult learners, across a variety of contexts, and discuss new opportunities for partnership with the adult education system that can help to mitigate inequities related to digital access and opportunities for learning/upskilling.

The specific presentations address:

1. The conceptualization of digital problem-solving among priority low-skilled populations
2. Tools and standards for assessing digital health literacy in adult learner populations
3. E-health readiness and the adult learner experience in government assistance programs
4. Navigating issues of data privacy and health misinformation on social media among immigrant women learners.

This session will enable attendees to reflect critically on the digital and data literacy demands of our health care system and identify action steps in their own programs that can ensure the adult learner perspective is included in future digital equity and health equity efforts.

Monday,  October 30 • 4:30pm – 6:00pm EST

Each panelist in this session will focus on a unique socio-ecological level and its relationship to mental health literacy in a university community. The panelists will explore factors such as race, religion, culture, education, and mental health experiences. The presentation aims to generate meaningful discussions and provide insights into the intersectionality of influential factors from an individual’s environment and mental health literacy. Speaker 1 will explore the individual level of the socio-ecological model (SEM), exploring demographic factors as well as how mental health experiences are associated level of mental health literacy. Speaker 2 will focus on the organizational level of the SEM, analyzing how exposure to education in schools may influence mental health literacy. Speaker 3 will cover the interpersonal level, discussing how family openness to discussions about mental health-related issues were perceived during childhood and adulthood, and how those perceptions are correlated with mental health literacy levels. Finally, Speaker 4 will examine community and societal levels of the SEM and how culture, religion, and country of origin interplay with mental health literacy.

Monday, October 30 • 4:40pm – 6:00pm EST

In recent years Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged as a powerful technology capable of a range of tasks. This panel will discuss the potential of LLMs to democratize access to medical evidence by automatically simplifying medical texts. Specifically, in this session, attendees will learn about recent work investigating state-of-the-art LLMs for automatically simplifying such texts, and the current limitations to such methods. We will emphasize outstanding technical challenges (e.g., models “hallucinating” inaccurate content in simplified outputs), and connect these to downstream implications for public health.