Resources
Access the tools, program ideas and primers you need to stay up-to- date on health literacy topics.
Program Ideas
The primary goals for the Healthy Living Outreach for Seniors program were to help seniors develop the ability to use technology through tablets, as well as understand the importance of e-health literacy and patient-centered care.
In this blog series, we’ve talked about all aspects of Boomers and Beyond, a large-scale, grant-funded program series for Baby Boomers at the Palos Verdes Library District — from deciding which grant to apply for based on our community’s needs, to owning our failures, to getting people to show up for our 36 programs.
Geri-Fit® is a 45-minute, evidence-based strength training exercise class for older adults of all physical ability. Most of the bodybuilding exercises are performed seated in chairs with a set of light dumbbell weights with participants following along to a DVD or streamed workout. There’s no dancing, aerobics or choreography to learn, and participants never have to get on the floor.
Through its full-time youth health and program coordinator position, the City of Harker Heights (Texas) Stewart C. Meyer Public Library is working to infuse health and wellness into all of its programming.
Destinee Barton stepped into this new role in September 2018 after earning her bachelor’s degree in community health from Texas Woman’s University. I recently talked with Destinee, along with Library Director Lisa Youngblood and Children's Librarian Amanda Hairton, about how this new position emerged, what impacts it has had, and where they see it heading.
To better prepare the community in case of an emergency, the Dallas Public Library prepared a joint library and community disaster preparedness plan. The plan included a one-shelf collection of books at seven branch locations and a one-shelf medical reference collection at three branch locations for the community to use in times of emergency.
We also created a pocket guide that would hold useful disaster preparation information and distributed 25 flash drives with pertinent information for use during a disaster when access to our server might be inhibited.
Recently, the New York Public Library launched a new pilot series in select library branches across three boroughs. Community Conversations encourages open dialogue where everyone’s voice can be heard.
When you, as a resident, participate in Community Conversations, you can expect to:
Inserting a bit of whimsy into the academic library, staff hid 20 rubber ducks throughout Kathryn A. Martin Library’s four floors throughout the month of March. If found, the finders were able to redeem their duck for a de-stress kit, which included candy, stressballs, pencils, lanyard and stress-reduction tips.
When we were planning our large-scale, grant-funded health and wellness series for older adults, we knew we wanted to reach beyond our usual program attendees, and that meant trying a new location. Our tai chi program seemed like a good place to start.
Winterset is a community of 5,120 in central Iowa, about 40 miles outside Des Moines. Since 2011, a number of our local organizations have collaborated to present Wellness Wednesdays in Winterset, a program series that strives to improve the health and wellness of our residents. Programs run from early May to late October and are free of charge and open to all ages.
At two national health conferences last month, I learned about an array of new programs taking place in public libraries, from Play Streets to Fix-A-Flat. A major take-away from these conferences is that many people across the country interested in health are ready and eager to team up with public librarians.
I also learned a new acronym: HEAL, which stands for Healthy Eating, Active Living.
