The Health Literacy Missouri (HLM), the nation’s first statewide center devoted solely to increasing health literacy, opened for business today in St. Louis.
The non-profit private corporation will operate on a $2.4 million annual budget funded by the Missouri Foundation for Health. HLM will receive an additional $1 million from the foundation to support several community-based health literacy projects across the state. The funding represents the largest sum of money ever devoted to a state health literacy center.
“We are going to make health care understandable to all,” said Dr. Steve Pu, chairman of the Health Literacy Missouri Board of Directors and a surgeon in private practice in Kennett, MO. “And by understanding health care, people will make better decisions about their health and subsequently, we’ll have healthier people moving forward.”
Health literacy is defined as “getting and using easy to understand information about your health.”
The mission of HLM is to improve the health of all Missourians and become a national leader in health literacy by providing access to plain language health care information, offering educational resources that help health care providers communicate effectively with patients, creating systematic change at the point of medical care, improving health literacy through education and community collaborations, and strengthening the evidence base for health literacy.
Dr. Arthur Culbert, the newly named president and CEO of HLM, said his goal will be to make the center sustainable by providing fee-based health literacy services, programs, and materials to corporations and organizations. The fees will also support HLM’s social justice programs and other mission-related projects.
“I want to build a foundation that’s going to allow us over the next decade to become a sustainable center,” Dr. Culbert said. “And we have the team in place to do exactly that.”
“Health Literacy Missouri is a unique resource for the citizens of Missouri,” said Dr. Cynthia Baur, a member of the HLM Board of Directors and the director of the Division of Health Communications and Marketing, National Center for Health Marketing, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Considered a national pioneer in the field of health literacy, Dr. Baur is co-chair of the HHS Health Literacy Workgroup and architect of the National Call to Action. “Elected officials, government and community agencies, the media, and citizens now have a reliable source of information and tools to help improve health literacy across the state,” she said.
The idea for Health Literacy Missouri grew out of theMissouri Foundation for Health (MFH), which noticed that several of theprograms it funded were devoting more and more resources to combat limitedhealth literacy.
“A few years ago, the Missouri Foundation for Health identified health literacy as an issue that challenges many Missouri residents and our health care delivery systems,” said Dr. James R. Kimmey, the foundation’s president and CEO. “Our funding strategy focused on developing a statewide solution to improve health literacy for both individuals and health care providers.”
MFH brought together interested people from around the state with an expertise in health literacy. Three strong organizations responded: The Southwest Missouri AHEC at Missouri State University in Springfield, the Center for Health Policy at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and the St. Louis Collaborative based at Washington University’s Health Communication Research lab. Together, they formed a Coordinating Council and HLM was born.
The group’s website, www.healthliteracymissouri.org, provides users free access to an online library of health literacy materials collected by HLM.
The organization will advocate for health literacy issues at the state and national level, working to effect policy change, inform stakeholders, and support and initiate grassroots and community activities. HLM also will serve as the connector between health literacy organizations and coalitions nationwide, providing resources and information to raise the awareness of health literacy at all levels. The group also will help build other state coalitions, as well as ensure that health literacy is part of any national health care reform.
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