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Across the Life Course |
Non-Profit Organization | The Indigenous Story Studio (formerly the Healthy Aboriginal Network) is a non-profit organization based in British Columbia whose purpose is to create entertaining knowledge translation tools for youth (pre-teens to early 20 s) on health and social issues using modalities such as comic books, graphic novels, film/video, animation and augmented reality, all of which take into consideration providing youth with information that they can understand and that appeals to them. For more information visit: https://istorystudio.com/about-us/ |
| University Course | In 2013, Vamos developed and currently teaches the first Canadian core undergraduate health literacy course titled Health Literacy and Systems Navigation in the School of Public Health & Social Policy at the University of Victoria in British Columbia [24]. Aligned with the aforementioned Canada’s milestone reports that promote ‘education for health literacy’ focusing on higher education, this innovative course provides future allied-health professionals the opportunity to explore practices, tools, and policies guiding health literacy efforts for diverse people across settings and the life-course. It was recently adapted and used as a blueprint for a proposed introductory online European health literacy course for two German universities [77]. | |
| Provincial Network | The BC Health Literacy Network is a unique network of networks of people and organizations representing various sectors working together (e.g., education, health care, library, seniors, government) committed to the advancement of health literacy. Since its establishment in 2011, Rootman continues to lead the steering committee meeting monthly to pursue goals articulated in a provincial strategy [78] and to help organize educational activities related to the goals. Example activities include: a two-day summer school; community of practice meetings; webinars; and workshops to raise awareness and build capacity of the BC networks to deliver health literacy programs over the life-course. | |
| Provincial Organization | The Council of Senior Citizens Organization (COSCO) of British Columbia [79] is an umbrella organization made up of seniors’ organizations and individual associate members representing about 80,000 seniors. A grant from the former Canadian Council on Learning led to the development of a series of workshops related to health literacy using a “training of trainers” model. Currently, on request, they offer workshops on 43 different issues and topics of particular interest to seniors at no cost, delivered mostly by seniors trained to do so using “plain language” principles. For more information visit: http://www.coscobc.org/index.php/cosco-workshops |