Planning outcome evaluation carefully and conducting research into mediators between health information and behavior will strengthen the ability to identify best practices and develop a theoretical framework and practical guidance for health information outreach.
The field of librarianship has a history of involvement in patient education, general literacy and information literacy efforts. This history and prominent placement in communities make libraries and librarians an excellent resource in advancing health literacy practice and research. This chapter provides an overview of health literacy and health information literacy efforts in US libraries over the past two decades.The chapter begins with the description of the role of the US National Library of Medicine in developing resources, programs, and partnerships serving health information needs of the public. It then overviews special training programs for increasing librarians' expertise with health information and health literacy support. The narrative also presents different models of health information outreach programs in diverse communities, focusing on serving special populations that may suffer from health disparities.The second half of the chapter describes libraries' and librarians' health information response to continuously evolving contexts, mediums, and requirements. One subsection describes librarians' outreach effort with cutting-edge technologies, such as virtual worlds and gaming. Another focuses on supporting patients' information needs in clinical settings. Two more describe how libraries meet patrons' health information needs in the context of disaster preparedness and health insurance market place sign-up.While presenting the information, to the extent possible, the chapter draws upon research and evaluation of the effectiveness of different types of programs. It also discusses enablers of successes, limitations of the existing data, and directions for future research.
A new method for the rapid assessment of neonatal withdrawal was tested. Three studies with 80 newborns compared the reliability, sensitivity and specificity of the Neonatal Withdrawal Inventory (NWI) with that of the Neonatal Abstinence Scoring System (NASS), a widely used neonatal withdrawal scale. Interrater reliability for raters assessing neonatal withdrawal with the NWI (range, 0.89-0.98) was superior to that demonstrated by the same raters using the NASS (range, 0.70-0.88). With the NASS as the standard, the sensitivity and specificity of the NWI were 100% at syndrome detection and treatment threshold levels. With use of the NWI, the severity of neonatal withdrawal could be accurately assessed in 10 minutes under case-blinded conditions. The NWI's advantages include brevity, ease of administration, and flexibility. The NWI's simplicity and accuracy commend its wider use as a clinical and experimental tool.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.