By Katie Brandt

While talking to people in southeast Ohio about their health care, researcher Ann Rathbun met one man in Vinton County whose story affected her. A diabetic, he had trouble finding a certain pair of shoes to help his circulation. He also couldn't find the free dental clinic he knew was available.

"It was clear to me that he didn't even know where to get the information to help him be healthy," says Rathbun, an assistant professor of health sciences at Ohio University.

The man's situation was not so unusual, however. Rathbun discovered this when she spent the last year researching how people access and interpret the health advice provided by hospitals and caregivers. She wants to improve access to this type of information, and spoke with about 430 patients and caregivers at grocery stores, festivals, health care centers and hospitals in Athens, Hocking, Pike and Vinton counties.

Rathbun asked people how they learn about their health issues, and if they receive and understand the details they need during doctor visits. Rathbun also showed them two health brochures and asked which they preferred. She learned that not only do many people lack a basic knowledge of general health information, but they also have trouble understanding the medical jargon found in health literature.

This is not surprising, Rathbun says, considering the majority of the brochures and pamphlets she analyzed were written at 10th- and 12th-grade reading levels. The typical newspaper article is written at a sixth-grade level, and the nation's reading average is at an eighth-grade level. "Most of the people who read the poorest," Rathbun says, "are clustered right here in southeast Ohio."

She spoke with patients who said they had taken incorrect medications, as well as some who did not understand proper self-care techniques simply because the pamphlets they looked to for guidance used jargon they didn't understand.

In addition to gathering data, Rathbun took a proactive approach, looking for ways to increase awareness of health literacy as an issue. She ran workshops and spoke with roughly 100 community health care providers throughout southeast Ohio. Rathbun educated attendees about various ways to communicate with their patients and also expressed the importance of making sure patients understand everything that is expected of them. She regularly checks back with the caretakers to see if they have adjusted their approaches.

With the bulk of this research complete, Rathbun is now shifting her focus. She and colleagues from the College of Osteopathic Medicine’s Department of Specialty Medicine and the Appalachian Rural Health Institute have asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to consider Appalachian culture when developing health materials. The CDC already researches and targets health information toward different racial and ethnic groups, and Rathbun hopes her research will prove that Appalachia has its own unique needs as well.

Rathbun is also writing a grant proposal to submit to the National Institutes of Health to create a health literacy academy at Ohio University. Her goal, she says, is to "make us a leader in health literacy for this area."

Katie Brandt will graduate with a BSJ in '06.

Related link

Ann Rathbun's School of Health Sciences Home Page