The Huddle: Conversations with the Diabetes Care Team

Health Literacy: Tactics to Assess and Overcome Barriers

Episode Summary

Anyone can be impacted by health literacy barriers, no matter their ability or education level. That’s why assessing an individual to determine what they understand is critical to ensuring successful self-management. In this episode, Katherine O’Neal, Pharm.D., MBA, BCACP, CDE, BC-ADM, AE-C, CLS, co-author for AADE’s new cultural competency and health literacy practice paper, discusses ways to assess for health literacy and address barriers that might impact the individual’s ability to understand and follow treatment plans. We talk through the five categories of health literacy, identify how to assess for understanding and we end with tools you can use to overcome barriers.

Episode Notes

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Cultural and Health Literacy Considerations with Diabetes: An AADE Practice Paper - https://www.diabeteseducator.org/docs/default-source/practice/educator-tools/cultural-and-health-literacy-considerations-with-diabetes.pdf?sfvrsn=2

AADE health literacy and cultural competency resources – www.DiabetesEducator.org/CulturalCompetency

Formal Methods to Asses Health Literacy

Diabetes Numeracy Test (DNT) – short 5 item or 15 item long version - https://healthliteracy.bu.edu/documents/43/Diabetes%20Numeracy%20Test%20Eng.pdf

Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine (REALM) - 5 minutes - http://www.impact-information.com/impactinfo/newsletter/realm.pdf

Brief Health Literacy (5 minutes) and Brief Print Health Literacy - 5 minutes - https://healthliteracy.bu.edu/brief