Page 98 - Health Literacy, eHealth, and Communication: Putting the Consumer First: Workshop Summary

Health Literacy, eHealth, and Communication: Putting the Consumer First: Workshop Summary

eMeRGinG tooLS AnD StRAteGieS

population-level tools today versus a potential tomorrow. In Minnesota,
for example, probably about 80 percent of the providers have HIT tools,
but that is very different from the country overall.
It is also interesting, the participant continued, that HIT is not yet
associated with performance. That is, having HIT is not yet a factor in
terms of improving performance because many systems are old-school
technologies. Perhaps there should be short-term and long-term objectives
that address the progress in improving health, with old-school technolo-
gies being used while the infrastructure for IT is being built in order to
enable something more in the future. It frequently is the case that things
take longer to occur than one envisions, so it may be that the benefits of
IT will take much longer to achieve. If one places a great deal of emphasis
on IT in Healthy People 2020, one may not actually make a lot of progress
in improving the nation’s health in the interim.
Another participant stated that IT can, if developed with more than
just a focus on the individual, facilitate examination of population-level
health. How do the risk factors as determinants of health relate to the
infrastructure IT issues? Friedman agreed that it is important to focus on
population HIT tools.
Harris replied that that is part of the framework development that
the groups are working on. How might they relate to one another? Also,
for the first time, there is public advisory group that is providing input to
the Secretary. Jonathan Fielding is chair of that 13-member group which
will also be discussing these issues and questions. There is a dialogue
between the federal interagency group and the public advisory group. A
public comment page has been added to the Healthy People website and
everyone is urged to ask questions and make comments.
One audience member said that 10 years from now it will likely be
possible to measure genetic risk factors for various populations in order
to judge which interventions will work best for which populations. Will
Healthy People 2020 address genetics? Friedman responded that this is
one of the areas that, as an audience member observed earlier, will prob-
ably take longer to achieve than is currently anticipated.
Another audience member said that many people still do not under-
stand health literacy or its importance for health. Healthy People is an
important effort that could help bring much needed attention to the issues
of health literacy and its affect on health. One may say that health literacy
is a tool that flows across objectives, but if there are not explicit objectives
related to health literacy, important stakeholders will be missing from
the discussion and action. Health literacy is a determinant of health,
one which will be of even more importance by 2020. The participant
concluded by saying that including specific health literacy objectives in
Healthy People would place a national focus on this important area.

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