Health literacy data

Health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the ability to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions, and is a major issue for health care services. 

In the UK 43% of adults struggle to understand written health related information and this rises to 61% when numeric information is included (Rowlands, 2015).

Health Education England, along with the University of Southampton have created an online tool that provides estimates of low health literacy, which can be viewed at the level of local authorities. 

The tool can further be combined with low health numeracy to give an overall picture of the challenges in producing accessible health information for the local population.

As well as searching by area, the site has a clickable map that allows you to explore the data visually.

You can find the online tool here http://healthliteracy.geodata.uk/

Web site: What drives health inequalities? Evidence hub

www.health.org.uk/evidence-hub

The What drives health inequalities? evidence hub brings together data and insight highlighting how the circumstances in which we live shape our opportunities for healthy lives. 

Provided by The Health Foundation, the site explores these social and economic circumstances. It brings together a wide range of data and insight to explore:

• why circumstances such as our housing, transport and work matter for health
• the trends and inequalities that need to be addressed to build a fairer, healthier society.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, and the wider governmental and societal response, have brought health inequalities into sharp focus. 

The evidence hub explores long-term trends in the factors that drive health inequalities. Much of the analysis uses large official data sources that have a significant time lag, meaning that they currently do not capture the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Each topic has a section exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, using emerging evidence and research. As we update the evidence hub we will be introducing more analysis exploring the impact of COVID-19 on health inequalities. 

Health and Care Video Library

Funded by the NHS, the Health and Care Video Library consists of over 600 free health related videos.

Developed in partnership with an NHS trust, the videos have all been approved by a clinician and they cover topics such as dementia, diabetes, heart disease, learning disabilities, mental health, pregnancy, and vaccines. 

There are also a number of ‘how to’ and ‘what to expect’ videos alongside.

https://healthandcarevideos.uk/

The videos are aimed at patients who need support, care or more information at home, but can be useful for NHS staff and students too. 

The video library is also linked from the NHS.UK home page and all the content is also available via an app.

Mind the gap: a handbook of clinical signs in black and brown skin

Mind the gap is a free, downloadable UK ebook. It offers images of conditions on black and brown skin (that are frequently omitted from medical text books) and is a useful support for diagnosing conditions in people from a BME background.

The book was produced by Black and Brown Skin as a tool to support medical education when treating patients with darker skin "to aid earlier and more accurate diagnosis, increased patient satisfaction and greater confidence for healthcare professionals when treating people of colour" (from the web site).

iHealth Facts - health claims fact checked

iHealth Facts is a web site aimed at the public where you can quickly check on how reliable health related claims are and what the evidence is to support them.

The site also aims to help the public to use evidence to make their own health related decisions.

You can use the site to search for any health related question, as well as seeing the reply to previous enquiries.

Questions are answered with a simple summary, as well as having links to the research and an overview of the evidence used.

The site is run by Health Research Board-Trials Methodology Research Network (HRB-TMRN), Evidence Synthesis Ireland and Cochrane Ireland.

Need information on patient experience? Try the Healthwatch national reports library

Healthwatch National Reports Library Tool

Healthwatch have created a library of reports produced by every local Heathwatch in every part of the country.

Although it is still in development, the library features a wealth of patient experience information in over 2000 reports, covering Primary Care, Secondary Care, Urgent and Emergency Care, Social Care, Mental Health and Community Services.

The reports are searchable by title or keyword, you can specify what NHS sector you are interested in, and limit by date. You can also look for specific types of report, evidence of impact and and you can even browse by locality (you can find all the reports for Northamptonshire here).

Healthwatch have created a really useful tool and if you need information on patient experience it is a great way to see what is happening up and down the country.

Always Caring, Always Nursing: Ethel 100 years of professional nursing 23rd December 2019

Ethel Fenwick

The Nursing and Midwifery Council are celebrating 100 years of professional nursing with the centenary of the Nurses Registration Act on the 23rd of December.

The Always Caring, Always Nursing site features a timeline, 100 years of professional pride, which looks at the major milestones of professional nursing in the UK.

There is also a profile of Ethel Fenwick, the first registered nurse and a real pioneer in the field.

Bring it up-to-date, there are also the stories of individual registered nurses, Tales from then, now and tomorrow.

For anyone with an interested in, or wanting to celebrate the rich history of professional nursing, the NMC's site is well worth a look.

Fact checking sites - sorting the facts from the spin

With a general election weeks away, and claim and counter claim appearing in the media and online, coupled with the rise of "fake news" and "deep fake" videos, it is can be difficult to sift out the facts from the spin (or even misinformation).


However, there are some sites who do their very best to ensure factual analysis of the days news and deliver an unbiased, un-spun analysis.

We recommend starting with Full Fact. They are an independent charity who provide impartial analysis of news items and political claims and who even push to have misinformation corrected. Full Fact are transparent about their funding and the team who run the organisation and carry out the analysis. They are a great place to start if you want to get to the bottom of a news story.

There are also some other fact checking sites you may find useful:

• Media Bias / Fact Check is a useful site that follows a strict methodology to assess the biases and the accuracy of media sources. It is a US based site, but also includes reviews of lots of UK based media outlets (e.g. The Daily Mail). A useful resource if you come across a site you are less familiar with or want to get a feel for the accuracy of your preferred media company.
  
• Fact Check run by Channel 4, attempts to look at the truth behind news stories and the claims of political parties and "hold them to account"
  
• BBC Reality Check as with Fact Check, the BBC service was set up to check and debunk misleading stories posing as real news.

Of course not every story will be covered by a fact checking service, so you will sometimes have to use your own judgement. Full Fact have developed a handy fact checking toolkit which offers simple practical tools to help you identify the accuracy of a story.

Health Information Week day 5: Easy Health #HIW2019

Health Information Week is a national, multi-sector campaign to promote high quality information for patients and the public. High quality health information can have a huge impact on people’s ability to stay healthy and manage illnesses effectively, giving them a better quality of life.

Our campaign this year is focused on enabling clinicians to access good quality information aimed at the public which they can recommend to patients.

We have also produced Helping you to help your patients, which is a brief guide to evaluating information as well as recommendations for sites where you can find trusted information aimed at patients.

For day 5 of Health Information Week we are looking at the Easy Health web site.

Easy Health is a valuable source of patient information leaflets and videos in an accessible and easy-read format, ideal for patients with learning disabilities or communication difficulties. 

The leaflets are produced by a range of healthcare organisations, charities, and NHS Trusts. Just click on “Health Leaflets” to browse by topic or use the search box to search.

For highly accessible information, we thoroughly recommend Easy Health.

We hope you have enjoyed our series of short items on sites that you can use to provide good quality information to your patients and the public. Please contact one of the libraries if you have any questions...

Health Information Week day 3: Behind the headlines #HIW2019

Health Information Week is a national, multi-sector campaign to promote high quality information for patients and the public. High quality health information can have a huge impact on people’s ability to stay healthy and manage illnesses effectively, giving them a better quality of life.

Our campaign this year is focused on enabling clinicians to access good quality information aimed at the public which they can recommend to patients.

We have also produced Helping you to help your patients, which is a brief guide to evaluating information as well as recommendations for sites where you can find trusted information aimed at patients.

For day 3 of Health Information Week we are looking at the Behind the Headlines service.

Behind the Headlines is part of the main NHS UK site and is a really useful resource that provides an unbiased, evidence based view of health stories featuring in the news headlines.

For each item featured there is an overview of the story as well as a look at the accuracy of the reporting in the media. This is followed by an appraisal of the actual research the story is based on and some commentary about what the results mean and what we can draw from that.

Behind the Headlines is a particularly useful resource for clinicians who may be faced with patients who have seen an article in a daily newspaper and want to know what it means for them.

Tomorrow for Health Information Week we'll be looking at a web site that gives you access to a huge amount of information...

Web site of the month: The NHS Apps Library

Newly launched this month, the NHS Apps Library provides selection of safe trusted apps and digital tools to support the health care of patients and the public.

All the apps in the library have met NHS Digital standards around clinical safety, usability and security.

You can browse the apps by category, search for specific ones or you can scrolls through a list.

www.nhs.uk/apps-library/

Most of the apps in the library are free, although some have to be purchased and a few require a referral from a health professional to access.

With so many health related apps available, the NHS Apps Library is a great place to start to ensure you have a high quality product that will keep your data secure and do the job it is meant to.

Web site of the month: Almost a Doctor

Almost a Doctor is a free UK site aimed at medical students, junior doctors and other health professionals to help you (as the site says) "learn about stuff".




The site contains revision notes, flashcards, mind maps as well as  an online medical encyclopaedia which you can browse by category. 

The content of the site is written by both health professionals and students, but it is always reviewed by a doctor before publication to ensure all the content is accurate and of good quality.

Almost a Doctor is a really useful resource and highly recommended.

Web site(s) of the month: Medical terminology

Medical terminology can be highly confusing, with lots of technical terms, abbreviations and jargon (sometimes with the same term meaning different things).

Even for health professionals this can sometimes prove difficult.

To try and help to navigate through this maze, here are a selection of web sites to help explain what the terms mean.

Acronym Buster https://www.nhsconfed.org/acronym-buster
Produced by the NHS Confederation, this searchable A-Z list will give you the meaning of most of the acronyms used in the NHS

Care and Support Jargon Buster
www.thinklocalactpersonal.org.uk/Browse/Informationandadvice/CareandSupportJargonBuster/
An A-Z directory of the most commonly used words and phrases in health and social care translated into plain English by TLAP

Emedicine www.emedicinehealth.com/medical-dictionary-definitions/article_em.htm

An online dictionary of medical terms covering over 16000 items of medical terminology

Great Ormond Street Hospital Health Dictionary www.gosh.nhs.uk/children/about-your-condition/health-dictionary/health-dictionary

A simple A-Z list of medical terms

Mondofacto Medical Dictionary www.mondofacto.com/dictionary/medical.html
A UK based free online medical dictionary

Understanding Medical Words: A Tutorial https://medlineplus.gov/medicalwords.html

A tutorial from the National Library of Medicine which teaches you about medical words. You'll learn about how to put together parts of medical words. You'll also find quizzes to see what you've learned.

Web site of the month: Stoptober

The Stoptober website is full of information and resources to aiming to give smokers the best possible chance of quitting.

By answering a few simple questions, the site will help you develop a personal quitting plan with tailored resources to help you succeed.

It also features information on aids to help you stop smoking, including nicotine replacement and electronic cigarettes as well as technological solutions like the Stoptober App, a Facebook community Messenger chat, daily support by email, and links to local face-to-face support.

The Stoptober site is a really useful site for anyone thinking of quitting. Given that if you stop smoking for 28 days you are 5 times more likely to stay a nonsmoker, Stoptober is the perfect opportunity to start stopping for good...

Health professionals can also find all the latest campaign materials for Stoptober on the Public Health England Campaign Resources site.

Web site(s) of the month - health events and awareness days

There are a lot of health related events, awareness days, weeks and even months and it can be difficult to keep up with all the campaigns and know what is happening when.

Here is a few sites that can help you keep up with all the things going on throughout the year.

• Awareness Days UK Upcoming awareness events (not just health related), UK and international
• Healthline Health awareness calendar
• Inclusive Networks Diversity and awareness days calendar 
• NHS Employers Calendar of national campaigns 2018 to 2019 table
• Public Health England Campaign Resources Centre information on, and resources to support all of PHE's campaigns. 
• Time to Change Mental health calendar

Web site for the month: Critical Care Northampton

We have picked a site with a local connection this month, Critical Care Northampton. The site was founded by Northampton General Hospital consultant Jonny Wilkinson and is a great resource for anyone interested in FOAMed (Free Open Access Medical Education), emergency care, ITU, anaesthesia and POCUS (Point of Care Ultra Sound).

https://criticalcarenorthampton.com

With two other consultant colleagues acting as editors, the site features a variety of content and resources, practical advice, news and reviews including:

• ICU emergencies
• Guidelines
• How to guides
• Downloadable resources
• Evidence and research articles
•  Medical calculators
• Mnemonics
• And a lot more...

Critical Care Northampton is a great resource for consultants, junior doctors and medical students, designed to "keep you out of trouble" as the site says, it's well worth a visit.

Web site of the month: The NHS on Film

To Celebrate the 70th anniversary, the British Film Institute have made available a large selection of films about the NHS for free.

With films going back to the NHS's foundation in 1948, there is a wide range of material covering a selection of health related topics.

From the creation of the NHS and the wider welfare state in the 1940s, this is a fascinating (and sometimes amusing) collection of films including historical snippets, instructional and training items, documentaries, animated items and the ever-popular public information film (sometimes featuring some "interesting" period hairstyles and clothes).

These are as much a document of their times as they are of the NHS and the NHS on Film collection is well worth a look.

NHS on Film free at the BFI

The Social Prescribing and Self Care Wiki

https://wiki.healthylondon.org/Social_Prescribing_and_Self_Care_Wiki

Produced by the Health London Partnership, the Social Prescribing and Self Care Wiki contains an extensive library of resources around social prescribing (referring people to non-clinical services) and self care including:

• policy and strategy
• how to commission
• monitoring and evaluating
• research reports
• examples of services 
• videos
• links to other useful resources

Although London based, the Wiki is a really useful resource for anyone interested in social prescribing or self care.

Web site of the month: That's Nonsense!

It has been a while since we last featured web sites that allow you check the facts of an internet news story (see our post from January 17), so we thought it was about time to feature another.

That's Nonsense is a UK based site that "deals with debunking Internet hoaxes, hearsay, rumours and fake news". The site promises unbiased reporting and links to reputable sources.

The site features different sections covering:

• Latest Internet related news covering things like scams, circulating rumours and privacy issues
• Facebook related scams 
• The latest Internet based hoaxes and rumours
• A series of tutorials aimed at helping you improve your online privacy, avoid scams and stay secure on the Internet

Of particular interest to social media users (and you can also follow them on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter), That's Nonsense is a useful resource to help you spot the hoaxes, avoid the scams and stay safe on the Internet.

Web site of the month: MindEd for Families

MindEd is a free learning resource aimed at families and carers about the mental health of children and young people, and older adults.

https://mindedforfamilies.org.uk/

The young people section offers hints and tips on parenting, looks at child development and common problems as well as having information on all the services available to support child mental health.

The section on older adults has information on memory problems, sleep, as well as common mental health issues, medications and services that offer support.

MindEd was developed by Health Education England with funding from the Department for Education and NHS England.