Healthy People Consortium Meeting
"Implementing Healthy People 2010"
November 11, 2000

Summary of Breakout Group Discussion Concerning:
Health Communication

Five of six (11.2-11.6) are developmental objectives and will be dropped by 2005. 
11.2 Health literacy costs up to $18 billion for managed care.
11.3 Very easy to do bad health care and waste resources--therefore must evaluate.
11.4 Wired for Health and Well Being--at www.scipich.org for more details.
11.6 Crucial channel to communicate health.
Sticking point: Measurement--without data, lose Healthy People objectives.
Measurement Efforts: 
11.2 Health literacy--work with Department of Education on National Assessment of Adult Literacy; add health literacy component in 2002.
11.3 Research and evaluation--focus initially on Federal and foundation programs.
11.4 Quality of health Web sites. Working with "codes of ethics" organizations and FTC. September 26, 2000 Medscape article. If you have Web sites, you should make sure that your site meets these codes of ethics. See www.hon.ch, and www.hiethics.org.
11.5 Centers for excellence. Work with NCI.
11.6 Patient-provider communication. Work with AHRQ to integrate into MEPS.
"Moving the needle"--to see progress, need both targeted and comprehensive activities.
Adopt one or more objectives--become an officially designated Healthy People partner; join coalitions or work independently.

APHA--Health Communication Working Group
Interested in adopting Health Communication objective, so produced a report, which is at www.apha.org; working group www.clemson.edu. 
Key criteria to rank objectives: expertise, resources, other activities in field, and overall feasibility.
Interviewed authors of chapters.
Results: Focus on research and evaluation--support centers of excellence; health literacy--support provider communication; Web quality--support home access.

1. What does implementing Healthy People 2010 mean to you?

• Involved with Women Business Owners--bring information to all members, helping them understand how to assist with their employees. Labeling is critical; use models to help them assess literacy at work.
• People take it for granted, especially health professionals; patients need to know that they should initiate a dialogue.
• Must find way to reach people with a few things we want them to do.
• Just started a program to market a health message.
• Research evaluation is important to assess target audience. If anyone needs to evaluate Web sites, talk to Leslie Hsu who is conducting usability tests for our sites.
• Produced booklet using extensive evaluations, including Spanish booklets.
• Because it is ubiquitous, implementing needs mechanism; get theories out there and the fact that people are using similar models; standardize the implementation.

2. How do you suggest we work with local community groups in implementing the Healthy People 2010 objectives?

• Focus on Public Health Infrastructure; we should all look at this focus area where all States are asked to develop plan.
• In Duchess County we have large numbers of Hispanics; we are collecting data about where we are, trying to figure out how to serve that population. Struggling with translating materials.
• CDC needs to stress good and bad ways of reaching communities when they are giving out grants.
• Community Action Teams had them prioritize what they thought were problems with the community.
• Need exchange of translating messages.
• Especially when we are talking about minority groups, there is a lot of distrust. What is effective is working with local community groups. Our group works with these groups in working with local communities in developing materials. Can be a resource to other groups. Important to keep in mind that immigrant population have no idea how to access health care system.
• We will definitely make sure that we can measure how well people can navigate health care system.
• People are tired of being told what to do. Many patients do not understand outcomes of their behavior. Can't make people do it, but using social marketing, see what appeals to people. We need to go up rather than go down. www.clemson.edu, www.socialmarketing.org. 
• Maybe the APHA working group could translate theoretical to practical.
• Raise awareness about Healthy People 2010 to public health schools and medical schools that have programs for their students to volunteer in local community groups--easy way to have students who have the time to work with community groups in improving health care. For example, do photonovellas with afterschool programs.

3. What are the challenges/barriers to meeting the Healthy People 2010 objectives? And how do you suggest we work to overcome them?

• Overcoming temptation to use emotional, perceived focus rather than what data show, for example, mad cow disease.
• Risk communication
• Media don't always have to use direct approach; for example, decide to use local weather channels/kids design their own sunshine crowns.
• One of our biggest issues is linguistic access (have interpreter available and signage posted).
• Collecting of data (violating OMB rules), public relations (getting information out--I can't send information directly but must go through DC office).

4. What can we do to support the elimination of health disparities among racial and ethnic population groups?

• Health literacy--language access, can't translate, must culturally adapt.
• Need data to measure those who are underserved.

5. How do we measure progress of Healthy People 2010 in the future? And what is the progress?

• Dr. Satcher also wants people to collect data in local communities. Tracking Healthy People 2010 refers to data collection process. If you measure the data the same way, you will be able to compare data in your community with national. Can see how you are doing in relation to other groups.

6. How can we work more effectively with the media in implementing the Healthy People 2010 objectives?

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