1. Health literacy instruction abroad: planning and reality
Carla Hagstrom, Gerstein Science Information Centre, University of Toronto,
carla.hagstrom@utoronto.ca
Sandra Kendall, Mt. Sinai Hospital, Toronto, skendall@mtsinai.on.ca
Jeanna Hough
Alemayehu Bisrat
In October, 2011, a team of four medical librarians (two from Toronto, Ontario,
hospitals, one from the University of Toronto, and a guest lecturer from the USA)
travelled to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for two weeks as part of the Toronto Addis Ababa
Academic Collaboration (TAAAC) Library Science program with the objective of
improving the clinical skills of Addis Ababa University (AAU) librarians and library
workers by offering train-the-trainer instruction sessions. The group held all-day
workshops on medical and health literacy training, as well as web design and
authorship, for 140 participants: librarians, physicians, nursing students, and faculty.
Planning the trip and the courses was a huge group effort, both in Toronto and Addis
Ababa.
Planning started over a year in advance, beginning with grant applications. Work on
providing course content took a number of University of Toronto and Toronto hospital
librarians several months to finish. The team sought giveaways from a number of
vendors over the spring and summer prior to the trip.
At the time of this writing (November, 2012), the three Toronto librarians are in Addis
Ababa for the second year, for further information literacy transfer.
The poster reflects the work involved in getting ready for the trip on a personal level
(cultural information meetings, inoculations, visas, passports, packing), on site
logistics, planning the course content (training manuals, course outlines), and the
reality of making daily (or hourly) changes to the agendas.