Hi Everyone,

Before asking this week's Wednesday question, I want to give some input on last week's question about advice for those doing health literacy coalitions. Recently there have been three Health Literacy Summits, organized by the National Institute for Literacy, which included panels of people who were doing such coalitions or collaborative projects. These people had some great advice for meeting the many challenges of making a coalition like this work.

Here are some suggestions they had in the summit I was fortunate enough to attend:

* keep showing up!!
* be patient!!!
* include an academic partner (with research clout)
* include a physician (who speaks the "language" and gets heard by the medical field)
* whatever group you are from, make clear what resources you can offer to the coalition (knowledge, expertise, access to your constituency/students/patients)
* make sure that each partner in the coalition sees the value of their participation (value to themselves)
* understand that health care is a very demanding field
* understand that literacy is a very demanding (and resource-poor) field
* find a specific person in the health care field in your community who is a strong supporter of adult literacy
* same as above but vice-versa
* "Create a Switzerland": a coalition can and should b e a non-threatening place for all partners...have a meeting place and website that is neutral turf for all
* partners want to push their own agendas..maybe they come to the table just to keep your activities "under their thumb", but you can use that to your advantage...
* use whatever momentum and marketing you have to make your coalition an "unmissable" one  in the community...make all potential partners feel like they're missing something key if they are not part of your coalition

I hope this helps!

All the best,
Julie

Julie McKinney
Health Literacy List Moderator
World Education
jmckinney at worlded.org