Chairs

Current SIG Co-Chairs:

Margaret Wood, MD, MPH

Ellen McMahon, MD, PhD

The mission of the APA Health Literacy SIG is to reduce the health literacy burden children and their caregivers experience at the personal and organizational levels through research, education, and advocacy.

Health Literacy as defined by the National Health Initiatives Healthy People 2030

  • “Personal health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the ability to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others.”
  • “Organizational health literacy is 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.”

Health Literacy SIG Goals

  • To provide a collaborative setting for SIG members to discuss gaps in pediatric health literacy literature and promote scholarship development
  • Create curricula used to educate providers and trainees to use evidence-based communication skills in order to improve patient outcomes
  • To readily partner with other organizations (AAP, AMA, CDC, NAM NIH) to ensure a pediatric health literacy perspective is represented, especially at the level of national health policy

Annual Summary

2021 – 2022 Current Projects & Events

    • Current Projects
      • Explore gaps in health literacy specific education of residents in both inpatient and outpatient settings
      • Establish consensus on the highest-yield health literacy objectives for pediatric resident education
      • Evaluate a national sample of discharge instructions for children with medical complexity from a health literacy perspective
    • Events
      • Biannual “Chocolate Chips & Scholarship” meetings where current or prospective SIG members can present their scholarship ideas in an open forum to further develop a potential project or to receive constructive feedback on a project in later stages of development
        • Trainee and junior faculty participation is highly encouraged
        • Consumption of chocolate chip cookies is highly encouraged during the meetings
      • Coffee and collaboration sessions where SIG members meet to discuss topics pertinent to health literacy and clinical care
      • Annual PAS SIG Meeting