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Health literacy instruction abroad: planning and reality
Carla Hagstrom, Gerstein Science Information Centre, University of Toronto, [email protected] Kendall, Mt. Sinai Hospital, Toronto, [email protected] HoughAlemayehu Bisrat
In October, 2011, a team of four medical librarians (two from Toronto, Ontario, hospitals, one from the University of Toronto, and a guest lecturer from the USA) travelled to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for two weeks as part of the Toronto Addis Ababa Academic Collaboration (TAAAC) Library Science program with the objective of improving the clinical skills of Addis Ababa University (AAU) librarians and library workers by offering train-the-trainer instruction sessions. The group held all-day workshops on medical and health literacy training, as well as web design and authorship, for 140 participants: librarians, physicians, nursing students, and faculty. Planning the trip and the courses was a huge group effort, both in Toronto and Addis Ababa.
Planning started over a year in advance, beginning with grant applications. Work on providing course content took a number of University of Toronto and Toronto hospital librarians several months to finish. The team sought giveaways from a number of vendors over the spring and summer prior to the trip.
At the time of this writing (November, 2012), the three Toronto librarians are in Addis Ababa for the second year, for further information literacy transfer.
The poster reflects the work involved in getting ready for the trip on a personal level (cultural information meetings, inoculations, visas, passports, packing), on site logistics, planning the course content (training manuals, course outlines), and the reality of making daily (or hourly) changes to the agendas.
