Idea Bar#8:Health Literacy

There's a lot going on in healthcare for the consumer. This past week, I attended and spoke at Consumer HealthWorld in Chicago. Innovation is happening everywhere in healthcare.

• Plodding along behind the scenes are many efforts - some of them contentious - to create a common and accessible platform for our health records.
• Consumer-driven healthcare continues to gain momentum with more and more ways to place me and you in charge of our healthcare management decisions.
• Social media impacts the broad industry on so many levels from offering patients peer-reviews of doctors and hospitals to condition-specific communities to grow and serve their common interests.

And business innovation. Two of the most interesting people I met were Janice Jackson, who heads up the Healthcare Innovations Center at AstraZeneca and Margaret Moore who runs Wellcoaches. Both represent a focus on business innovation. She is exploring different business innovations that could change how healthcare is delivered and how revenue is made. Janice participated in a panel that spent a fair amount of time debating the pros and cons of retail health clinics (e.g.  "Minute Cinics").

Margaret runs Wellcoaches which is a type of association for physical trainers and wellness coaches. She is part of an increasing focus on wellness and prevention versus treatment.

The Idea Already:

Health Literacy Programs for Consumers

With all this great change happening and new information and decision opportunities for the consumer - should I pay $40 co-pay with my doctor for a routine exam or stop in the minute clinic in Target - there is a terrific opportunity to provide health literacy programs to help all consumers get smarter about the healthcare options available to them.

Pharmaceutical Leadership Opportunity

This new health literacy program is the perfect initiative for a brand-conscious, consumer-committed pharmaceutical company. Each of the pharmas struggle between ambitions to make their corporate brand meaningful to consumers and their need to build product brands and sales. I am clearly talking about the former but firmly believe that any additional trust pharmaceutical giants can build with patients and physicians will utlimately (and quickly) strengthen their bottom line.

Right now, healthcare literacy is provided by that giant firehose of information called the Internet. Either you are getting expert information on heart disease from WebMD or hearing from a peer about their Lasik surgery on RevolutionHealth. You may belong to a patient community through Inspire (formerly ClinicaHealth) and may even get some "stay healthy' coaching through your HMO online. You are perfectly aware that there are agendas or at least POVs in collision out there: does your HMO just want to keep your benefits down? do the pharmas want to sell more pills at any cost? is your doctor struggling to achieve maximum throughput of patients just to maintain an entrenched business model?

We need an initiative akin to the media literacy efforts of the 60's and 70's that sorts out all of these new options and unpacks their meaning, bias and significance for people. Remember Paper Tiger Television - that was a grassroots organization that helped consumers understand the bias of media to better "read" what was delivered to them. The cable television industry created an initiative that continues today with Cable in the Classroom.

We need a health literacy initiative. In the age of consumer driven healthcare, we need to do better than just give people more control via new choices, we need to give them information that leads to decision-making tools and strategies. We need to help consumers understand and make these new choices.

The U.S. Government has an initiative afoot under HHS's Health Resources and Services Administration. They will have an event at the end of October which is apprently Health Literacy Month. NIH has it's own effort, as well. We should not leave this up to the government. A smart pharma could make this their signature CSR (corporate social responsibility) effort. It is an issue they could authentically get behind and rally their employees to be involved with. (The best CSR programs involve and inspire employees)

What would be the components of the program?

1. OurHealthLiteracy.com: Yes, I know that "literacy" is a mouthful for most consumers, but this is all about getting smart to be even more empowered and that is what literacy leads to. We are all illiterate in this byzantine, chaotic new world of healthcare change. There's power in knowing that fact and wanting to dig out.
2. Start with simple, DIY-style articles from different experts on the fundamental issues and choices out there. This would be a great way to solicit content froma variety of academic, commercial and consumer-created sources and build an overall "linkyness" to the site.
3. Build a mobile-accessible Health Answers FAQ - an ever growing database that reaches into a community for new answers much like Yahoo Answers. Each "answer-er" would need to identify their bias and enough about themselves that the person seeking their answer could judge the bias of the answer (all information has a bias)
4. Health: How it Works Video series: Video episodes that explain the fundamentals including the pros and cons. Imagine an episode on retail health clinics: what are they good for, what to watch out for, when to consider using them. Each video could allow for user comments to add to or debate some of the conclusions.
5. Syndicate content via widgets: create the Health Answers widget and give it away to everyone to embed in their sites and blogs.
6. Events during Health Literacy Month (October) that pull consumers, consumer advocates and helathcare professionals together to frame up additional curriculum for conusmers - what do we need to know now. these can feature blogging summits leading up to the event and live blogging/vlogging at the event to carry the proceedings farther while walking-the-walk of openness and participation.

Can a pharma really pull this off with credibility? They need a partner. But they can own it with that partner. Look at what WalMart is doing with their green efforts by linking up with key environmental organizations. Who would have thought?

This is the time. Consumers need this. Consumer driven healthcare needs this. I doubt HMO's ability to provide this but I do think the right pharma could.

We'll see.

The image? It is a concept-piece by Kristina Lee that "enables users to track their health through nutrition and fitness." A wild and woolly idea for the future that depends on health literacy today. See more about the phone here >.

Comments

[originsg]

Thanks for this great perspective! I'm one person starting a 501(c)3 to serve exactly this educational purpose in my hometown. I will follow your posts on this carefully.

[Renee Hobbs]

Pharmaceutical companies spend more than $5 billion each year to reach adults through television, newspapers, magazines and the Internet. Research evidence has shown that the ads lead people to ask their doctors about the drugs and patients’ requests for drugs can lead to inappropriate prescribing by physicians.

Few adults have been exposed to media literacy through any form of educational experience, and they may or may not activate critical thinking skills when attending to a media message about prescription drugs.

Learning to critically analyze and evaluate direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical marketing can empower consumers to obtain useful information from these messages while promoting an engaged, critical perspective in determining their relevance and value for themselves as individuals and for the health care system overall.

[Renee Hobbs]

Pharmaceutical companies spend more than $5 billion each year to reach adults through television, newspapers, magazines and the Internet. Research evidence has shown that the ads lead people to ask their doctors about the drugs and patients’ requests for drugs can lead to inappropriate prescribing by physicians.

Few adults have been exposed to media literacy through any form of educational experience, and they may or may not activate critical thinking skills when attending to a media message about prescription drugs.

Learning to critically analyze and evaluate direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical marketing can empower consumers to obtain useful information from these messages while promoting an engaged, critical perspective in determining their relevance and value for themselves as individuals and for the health care system overall.