HSLIC News

Organizations that deal with patient care celebrate health literacy month every October as they recognize that health literacy is an important part of the care they provide to patients.  For instance, if a patient does not know how to take their medication correctly, they can end up back in their doctor’s office or the hospital.  Patient outcomes suffer and the cost of medical care rises.  The goal of health literacy is to help individuals make informed health decisions by improving their ability to access, understand, and effectively use health information.  It is important to emphasize to busy patient care providers that health literacy matters and the annual October celebration serves as a wonderful reminder of this often-overlooked aspect of good medical care. 

The Health Sciences Library & Informatics Center offers workshops on Health Literacy every year.  In addition, the University of New Mexico Hospital (UNMH) is one of the few hospitals in the country that has an Health Literacy Office.  UNMH’s Health Literacy Office provides workshops on teach-back and plain language methods of communication.  In addition, they will review forms, policies and handouts for UNMH departments to make sure the documents meet suggested health literacy standards:  https://unmhealth.org/diversity-equity-inclusion/health-literacy.html

If you would like to learn more about health literacy, there are many excellent websites on the Internet for you to browse.  Here are a few:

National Institutes of Health:  https://www.nih.gov/institutes-nih/nih-office-director/office-communications-public-liaison/clear-communication/health-literacy

CDC:  https://www.cdc.gov/healthliteracy/index.html

Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion:  https://health.gov/news/202010/october-health-literacy-month

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) celebrates its 34th anniversary on July 26, 2024. This landmark and transformative legislation guarantees that people with disabilities have the same opportunities regarding employment, access to public services, public telecommunications, and accommodations as everyone else.

Signed into law on July 26, 1990, by President George H.W. Bush, the ADA protects people with disabilities from discrimination and advances equality for all.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is composed of five major titles--each title addresses different areas of public life where discrimination against individuals with disabilities can occur. Here are the major areas or titles of the ADA:

 I.  Employment

 II.  Public Services

III.  Public Accommodations and Services Offered by Private Entities

IV.  Telecommunications 

V.  Miscellaneous Provisions

For more information on the Americans with Disabilities Act, visit https://www.ada.gov

For information about the disability laws in New Mexico:  https://www.gcd.nm.gov/disability-laws/

If you have questions about the ADA, or need information about an ADA issue, see:  https://www.ada.gov/infoline/

Happy 34th Birthday Americans with Disabilities Act!!!!!!

Please join us for our exhibit closing reception and talk on Tuesday, July 9, 5pm-7pm in HSLIC Room 428. 

Dr. Laura Nellums, UNM Professor of Global Health, will present A World on the Move: Global Health Equity in the Context of Migration.

According to Dr. Nellums, "This presentation will focus on migration and health. It will encompass drivers and patterns of migration, social determinants of health in the context of migration, the interrelationship between immigration policy, health policy, migrant and public health outcomes, and recommendations for how to advance health equity in migrant communities."

Dr. Nellums obtained her BA in Spanish and International Relations from Wellesley College, followed by her MSc in Medical Anthropology (University of Oxford), and PhD in Public Health (King’s College London). Her research is broadly focused on improving inequities in access to care and health outcomes in excluded populations. Dr. Nellums' particular expertise is in migrant, refugee, and ethnic minority health, and she has carried out mixed-methods research in infectious diseases, mental health, stressful life events, maternal and child health, and health policy and services. 

This event is in conjunction with the National Library of Medicine's traveling exhibit Making a World of Difference: Stories about Global Health. The exhibit will be on display on the Library's 4th floor from June 3 - July 13, 2024.

The reception and exhibit are free and open to the public. No registration is required.

Refreshments will be served.

All of Us Tech Days Presentation

Lori Sloane and Deborah Rhue from HSLIC joined Todd Quinn and Karl Benedict from CULLS to present a talk about the All of Us Research Program at the annual University of New Mexico’s Tech Days on Friday, April 26, 2024.  The talk, entitled “All of Us: Using Big Data to Study Factors Affecting Health and Health Impacts,” was well- and enthusiastically received. 

Deborah, Lori, Todd and Karl have been working to promote awareness and enrollment in the NIH-sponsored All of Research Program since 2023 when the University of New Mexico became one of the Program’s officially enrolled research participants. 

The All of Us Research Program is an effort funded by the National Institutes of Health to gather health data from one million or more people in the United States.  The All of Us Research Program encourages individuals from communities historically left out of biomedical research studies to enroll and share their health data and make that data available to researchers through the All of Us Research Program platform.

   "All of Us: Using Big Data to Study Factors Affecting Health and Health Impacts":  Tech Days Slide Presentation

    For more information about the All of Us Research Program:  All of Us Research Program 

The purpose of National Minority Health Month is to "raise awareness about the importance of improving the health of racial and ethnic minority communities and reducing health disparities."

This year's theme is Be the Source for Better Health, which fits right in with HSLIC's mission to advance health and health equity as New Mexico’s only publicly accessible health sciences library. HSLIC is a source for better health information, which we believe can lead to better health.

Health disparities are a significant problem, and the library provides resources about them. The OMHRC Knowledge Center Online Catalog (Office of Minority Health Resource Center) gives access to 75,000 documents, books journal articles, and media related to the health status of racial and ethnic minority populations. PubMed searchers will find the MeSH terms Minority Health and Health Status Disparities, which were introduced in 2008. Note that there are other terms available to search the concepts prior to 2008.

Datasets are increasingly important and available to researchers. The National Neighborhood Data Archive (NaNDA) contains physical, economic, demographic, and social information at the census tract, ZIP code, and county level. This dataset was used in a recent publication about the devaluation of assets in Black neighborhoods. As a minority majority state (with less than half the people being non-Hispanic whites), and home to 23 American Indian tribes, as well as Black and Asian people, minority health issues are important to New Mexico researchers, health care providers, and community leaders. The New Mexico Community Data Collaborative maps local health conditions and behaviors, as well as provides data about special populations, such as health care providers and rural vs urban designations.

Image from World Bank CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED

National Public Health Week 2024 celebrates collaboration, cooperation, and partnerships in public health. The theme is “Protecting, Connecting and Thriving: We Are All Public Health.”

At HSLIC, we make resources available that support research in the broad field of public health, and collaborate with faculty and educate students in the College of Population Health.  Ours is a strong partnership. These past two years, as part of a grant from the college to develop an Academic Health Department, HSLIC librarians extended services to New Mexico Department of Health (NM DOH) practitioners. Academic Health Departments are partnerships between an academic institution and a health department. A goal is to strengthen the links between practice and academia, with opportunities for joint education, research and practice.

Librarians developed training modules in the process of evidence-based public health practice. We regularly teach these skills throughout the health sciences professional programs' curricula. A team of librarians, some with public health degrees, customized training to the context of public health and created four modules, following the steps of the process. These included:

• • Module 1: Developing Searchable Questions
  • Module 2: Searching for Evidence
  • Modules 3: A Toolkit for Evaluating Evidence
  • Module 4:  A Toolkit for Applying Evidence

Modules 1 and 2 were offered synchronously online to NM DOH personnel last spring, and all modules are now available to anyone through the UNM Digital Repository at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/er/

In addition, HSLIC became the partner library for NM DOH's Public Health Digital Library, a project of the Network of the National Library of Medicine. This means that New Mexico public health personnel have access not only to the hundreds of books, journals, and databases in that library but, if an item is not available, HSLIC will provide it from our collection or from another library. This greatly extends the scope of information sources available to practitioners.

At HSLIC we recognize and support the valuable work of public health practitioners. We are all public health!

      Did you know that February is National Wise Health Care Consumer Month?                   

What is National Wise Health Care Consumer Month?  National Wise Health Care Consumer Month is a month dedicated to raising awareness and educating the public about how to make wise choices regarding their health care and become a better-informed consumer.  The American Institute for Preventive Medicine established this national observance because they realized that the American public struggles to make informed decisions about their health care.

The American Institute for Preventive Medicine recommends that consumers know the following when making health care decisions https://healthylife.com/wise/Wise_Health_Care_Consumer.pdf

•  Know how to choose a health care plan
•  Choose their care providers carefully and thoughtfully 
• Communicate with their health care providers
• Are comfortable asking questions, sharing concerns and negotiating costs   
• Analyze and evaluate sources of health information
• Practice preventive care 
• Know when to treat themselves at home  
• Understand their prescriptions and take them as directed 

Health literacy is an aspect of wise health care.  The Health Sciences Library & Informatics Center offers Health Literacy workshops to interested faculty, students and HSC staff.  Our next workshop will take place on April 3, 2024.  If you are interested in attending this workshop, you can register at the link listed below.

 HSLIC Health Literacy Workshop, Health Literacy: Plain Language, Teach-Back and More, April 3, 2024, noon until 1:00 pm   https://goto.unm.edu/hslicevents

This past year, the UNM Health Science Library and Informatics Center (HSLIC) and University Libraries teamed up so UNM researchers can gain access to The National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program. Researchers can now gain access to all tiers of data after verifying identity and receiving mandatory training. Guidance for IRB application and templated language is available at: https://libguides.health.unm.edu/c.php?g=1359894&p=10042360

The All of Us Research Hub matches a broad research community with a diverse set of research participants. Its goal is to advance precision medicine research and fuel new insights into human health. The Research Hub houses one of the largest, most diverse, and most broadly accessible datasets ever assembled. It also provides an interactive Data Browser where anyone can learn about the type and quantity of data that All of Us collects. Users can explore aggregate data, including genomic variants, survey responses, physical measurements, electronic health record information, and wearables data. Registered users can use the Researcher Workbench to dive deeper into the data; conduct rapid, hypothesis-driven research; and build new methods for the future, using a variety of tools.

HSLIC and the University Libraries will be providing training sessions beginning in January 2024, but you can get started today. Support is available at https://support.researchallofus.org/hc/en-us, and the All of Us Research Program also provides weekly drop-in office hours. Learn more here: https://libguides.health.unm.edu/c.php?g=1359894

Who knew there was a holiday every July 3 that encourages you to attend a movie or spend the day at the gym? A holiday to save your skin! These past few days have been HOT, and summer has just begun. It may not be practical to spend a day indoors, but give yourself and your skin a break and seek shade either indoors, under an umbrella or floppy hat, or in front of HSLIC in the early morning – and don’t forget those UV protection sunglasses.

The Solar UV index is the strength of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. Last week, the local UV index reached its most extreme level, which means to avoid the sun between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. when skin damage can happen in minutes. Check out the hourly UV index at your location at the EPA website UV Index.

We conducted a survey recently to get your feedback about how to make the front area of the HSLIC building more functional and inviting. The top three responses were: tables, improved aesthetics, and additional SHADE. We are listening and planning. Meanwhile, be smart in the sun.