Today I have attended to Catalonia Health Promoting Hospitals Network kick off meeting. This Network, coordinated by Cristina Iniesta, has organised a conference about Health Literacy with Rima Rudd as key speaker. Rima Rudd conference was marvellous. Here comes my notes from the conference:

She started talking about income and education as the fundamental axis of health, beyond health care services, and health literacy as a pathway to health outcomes.

She stated that Health Literacy is a function of individuals’ skills and social demands. Core skills of health literacy are: Reading (also on the screen) Writing Numeracy Oral exchange (speaking and listening) Literacy skills influences one’s ability to access information and to navigate in highly literate environments of modern societies. After this definition she talked about how literacy skills of individuals constrained participation in economy and in society. Furthermore, she explained how these constrains influenced health care demand taking into account that health literacy is an interaction between individual factors and health sector factors

Individual factors:

• Literacy and numeracy skills;
• Language skills;
• Emotional state;
• Heath status;
• Experience and background knowledge

Health sector factors:

• Communication skills of health care workers;
• Institutional features;
• Procedures and processes;
• Material in use;
• Assumptions.

After this introduction she reviewed her main research findings. At this point I would like to suggest that you may visit her great website Health Literacy Studies. I also may suggest to check her presentation slide presentation Literacy and Health and her literature revision.

I have uploaded her presentation to SlideShare to spread her wonderful work

| View | Upload your own

Finally, I would like to thank Cristina Iniesta and the rest of the Catalonia Hospital Promoting Health Network for the organization of the event. I’m sure they will become a reference in Health Literacy soon.

The Spanish Health Minister has published a press release talking about its collaboration with Microsoft to launch Robot Robin, a Windows Live Messenger Assistant that helps young people through the Messenger to resolve doubts about health issues related with sex, pregnancy and alcoholic drinks. It is said that people can add Robin to the personal contact list and interact with him taking into account legal, privacy and security issues.

This initiative points out some trends detected in relation with health and the Internet as Innovative Health Technology:

• The importance of the private sector and the interest of the big companies like Microsoft and Google to get into this huge market.
• The importance of analyze the supply and the demand side, in this case digital natives as a heavy Internet users (demand) and the Internet as a tool to reach this audience, taking into account the possible digital divide.
• The importance of the understanding about how people use existing technologies everyday to develop new uses.

It has come to my notice that MedlinePlus has a new page on Health Literacy where Health literacy is defined as “the ability to understand health information and to use that information to make good decisions about your health and medical care. Health information can overwhelm even people with advanced literacy skills”.

eHealth has been tackled the issue of literacy (see as an example eHealth Literacy: Essential Skills for Consumer Health in a Networked World) putting the emphasis on “the ability to seek, find, understand, and appraise health information from electronic sources and apply the knowledge gained to addressing or solving a health problem”.

Talk about health literacy in the Network Society may include aspect related to the Internet, not as a separate world but as an integrate world where this technology is embedded, directly or not directly, in many aspects of our life. According to that it’s difficult to understand why the word Internet doesn’t appear on the first page of the Health Literacy or on the Quick Guide to Health Literacy  page. It’s probably time to integrate the Internet in all the activities related to health and try to avoid the “e” label.

Just two trends done by Blogpulse. Does they mean Digital Natives are interested in International Student Assessment?

I wonder how many social researchers are thinking about The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Digital Natives - Blog?

About The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA):

Are students well prepared for future challenges? Can they analyse, reason and communicate effectively? Do they have the capacity to continue learning throughout life? The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) answers these questions and more, through its surveys of 15-year-olds in the principal industrialised countries. Every three years, it assesses how far students near the end of compulsory education have acquired some of the knowledge and skills essential for full participation in society.

About Digital Natives:

An academic research team — joining people from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and the Research Center for Information Law at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland — is hosting and working on the core of this wiki, which illustrates the beginning stages of a larger research project on Digital Natives.

Are all youth digital natives? Simply put, no. Though we frame digital natives as a generation “born digital,” not all youth are digital natives. Digital natives share a common global culture that is defined not by age, strictly, but by certain attributes and experiences related to how they interact with information technologies, information itself, one another, and other people and institutions. Those who were not “born digital” can be just as connected, if not more so, than their younger counterparts. And not everyone born since, say, 1982, happens to be a digital native. Part of the challenge of this research is to understand the dynamics of who exactly is, and who is not, a digital native, and what that means.

The focus of this research is on exploring the impacts of this generational demarcation between those born with these technologies and those who were not. The project will address the issues and benefits of this digital media landscape and gain valuable insight into how digital natives make sense of their experiences online. This information will help us make recommendations to educators and legislators in a way that supports young people and harnesses the exciting possibilities their digital fluency presents.

Comments and links are welcome.

Juan Freire has saved one bookmark in his delicious an application called Maplecroft Maps

Maplecroft maps is a highly visual, web-based resource which contains detailed country information for over 200 states and maps key social, economic, environmental and political issues and their significance to business and society.

This innovative tool is designed to raise awareness amongst corporations, government and non-governmental organisations, academics, students and the general public of how an organisation’s operations interact with wider society, and how the risks and opportunities generated can be responsibly managed through stakeholder engagement and partnership.

For each specific issue, the map features:

• A unique index – designed by Maplecroft, measuring the global distribution of risk and opportunity;

• Country shading – illustrating the pervasiveness and risk ranking of the issue being mapped;

• In-depth analysis – emphasising the importance of each issue and its impacts and significance to business and society in general;

• Traffic light system – indicating whether the indicators relevant to the issue have increased, decreased or remained the same as in previous years;

• Hotspots – highlighting endemic risk within a country in respect of specific issues;

• Flashpoints – highlighting particular incidences of risk in respect of specific issues;

• Spotlights on business engagement – highlighting engagement by business in respect of managing specific issues;

• Case studies – positive and negative examples of how companies have managed the challenges that they have faced.

The interactive map tool itself is regularly updated with new features to make it easier and more enjoyable to use – learning must be a pleasure. New issues are added to the tool at regular intervals, as well as enhancements and updates to existing issues, adding depth by incorporating new research, data, case studies and policy developments as they become available.

This application includes maps with relevant information - index related to many issues (including Health & Safety and Education) but as a private profit initiative you have to pay for the resources. Would it be possible to construct those kinds of applications in a collaborative and open content project? Is open collaboration possible at such a scale? Should international organizations lead or fund those kinds of initiatives and make them open?