Health literacy is basic reading and numerical skills that allow a person to function in the health care environment. Even though most adults read at an eighth-grade level, and 20 percent of the ...population reads at or below a fifth-grade level, most health care materials are written at a 10th-grade level. Older patients are particularly affected because their reading and comprehension abilities are influenced by their cognition and their vision and hearing status. Inadequate health literacy can result in difficulty accessing health care, following instructions from a physician, and taking medication properly. Patients with inadequate health literacy are more likely to be hospitalized than patients with adequate skills. Patients understand medical information better when spoken to slowly, simple words are used, and a restricted amount of information is presented. For optimal comprehension and compliance, patient education material should be written at a sixth-grade or lower reading level, preferably including pictures and illustrations. All patients prefer reading medical information written in dear and concise language. Physicians should be alert to this problem because most patients are unwilling to admit that they have literacy problems.
Purpose:
To measure the impact of tying adoption of evidence-based worksite health promotion (WHP) interventions to annual organizational strategic objectives, as measured by the Centers for Disease ...Control and Prevention (CDC) Worksite Health ScoreCard (ScoreCard).
Design:
A prospective cohort study following Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM) affiliates against industry-specific and large employer benchmarks from 2016-2020.
Settings:
JHM, the largest private employer in Maryland with facilities in Florida and the District of Columbia.
Subjects:
Twelve JHM affiliates representing over 40,000 employees.
Intervention:
A strategic objective was established annually based on the ScoreCard and organizational priorities.
Measures:
JHM affiliates measured their WHP efforts annually using the ScoreCard. CDC industry-specific and large employer benchmarks were collected for comparison.
Analysis:
ScoreCard data was assessed annually to measure deviations from CDC benchmarks, determine whether strategic objectives were met, and inform additional annual objectives.
Results:
JHM demonstrated improvement from 8.9 percentage points above industry-specific and 3.4 percentage points below large employer benchmarks in 2016, to 26.4 percentage points above industry-specific and 21.8 percentage points above large employer benchmarks in 2020.
Conclusion:
Large employers face unique challenges in implementing WHP programs. Our study suggests embedding health promotion in annual strategic objectives may alleviate these challenges by prioritizing the goal and ensuring adequate resources to be successful. There are however, some limitations on using benchmarking data for comparison.
One's ability to read, listen, and comprehend health information is a vital element of maintaining and improving health. However, 90 million people in the United States exhibit less than adequate ...health literacy skills. Given that more than 70 million Americans suffer from cardiovascular diseases, it is certain that every physician's practice is affected by health literacy issues. Those with language and cultural issues tend to be the most affected. Yet numerous studies find physicians do a poor job of assessing their patients' health literacy skills. Patients are also unaware of the steps they should take, and how to take them, to improve their health and prevent complications. Numerous studies find, however, that outcomes can be improved with targeted patient education and improved physician communication skills that take into account patients' health literacy levels. Unfortunately, the health care system is only beginning to recognize this problem and take action to overcome its negative impact. By improving the communication process with patients, physicians may be able to improve cardiovascular outcomes.
For the past 3 years, Johns Hopkins Medicine has been offering employees with hypertension or pre-hypertension a lifestyle medicine program entitled Keep Your Pressure Down (KYPD). We chose to focus ...on blood pressure because of the high prevalence, the high associated cost and the plethora of lifestyle related factors contributing to high blood pressure, providing plenty of opportunities for non-pharmacologic improvements.8,9 The program offers an opportunity to build new skills that create a better opportunity to sleep well, move more, choose healthier foods and drinks, enhance social connections, and minimize stress. For 8 years prior to launching KYPD, Johns Hopkins Medicine had been on a journey to create a well-being culture. Cultures are defined by having shared behaviors, attitudes and beliefs. It’s much easier to make healthy choices and have positive emotions in a culture that supports well-being. Employers can create a culture supportive of health and well-being by focusing their attention on 6 building blocks, as described below. Intentionally cultivating these 6 building blocks ensures that our KYPD participants are supported within our designated sessions as well as outside of the program, throughout their daily work routine.
Adult working-class Americans spend on average 50% of their workday awake time at their jobs. The vast majority of these jobs involve mostly physically inactive tasks and frequent exposure to ...unhealthy food options. Traditionally, the workplace has been a challenging environment for cardiovascular prevention, where cardiovascular guidelines have had limited implementation. Despite the impact that unhealthy lifestyles at the workplace may have on the cardiovascular health of U.S. workers, there is currently no policy in place aimed at improving this. In this review, we discuss recent evidence on the prevalence of physical inactivity among Americans, with a special focus on the time spent at the workplace; and the invaluable opportunity that workplace-based lifestyle interventions may represent for improving the prevention of cardiovascular disease. We describe the current regulatory context, the key stakeholders involved, and present specific, guideline-inspired initiatives to be considered by both Congress and employers to improve the “cardiovascular safety” of US jobs. Additionally, we discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic has forever altered the workplace, and what lessons can be taken from this experience and applied to cardiovascular disease prevention in the new American workplace. For many Americans, long sitting hours at their job represent a risk to their cardiovascular health. We discuss how a paradigm shift in how we approach cardiovascular health, from focusing on leisure time to also focusing on work time, may help curtail the epidemic of cardiovascular disease in this country.
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