Health Literacy In Real Life

What if clinical trial participation is less about recruitment and more about trust, access, and what has to happen before someone is ever ready to say yes? In this episode of Health Literacy IRL , host Megan Freeland, PharmD talks with Tiffany Whitlow , Co-Founder and Chief Development Officer at Acclinate , about the real-world barriers that shape who gets to participate in clinical research. To...

What does it look like to operationalize health literacy inside a large academic medical center? In this episode of Health Literacy IRL , host Megan Freeland, PharmD talks with Katie Leath, MPH, MA , Director of the Center for Health Literacy at UAMS , about how health literacy can move from a side project to an embedded organizational priority. Katie shares how her team supports patient education...

What if the greatest problem isn't that patients don't understand health information — but that we're handing them too much information under too much pressure, with no tools to process it. In this solo episode of Health Literacy IRL, host Megan Freeland, PharmD explores why healthcare marketing, health communications, health literacy, and patient experience teams need to stop operating in silos —...

In this episode of Health Literacy IRL, I’m joined by Byron Jasper, MD, MPH, founder and CEO of Byja Clinic in Louisiana, to break down what DPC is, what it isn’t, and why the model naturally creates more space for people to understand and use health information in real life. We talk about: What DPC looks like day-to-day (and why “if you’ve seen one DPC practice, you’ve seen one DPC practice”) How...

What happens when a pharmacist becomes part of a direct primary care (DPC) clinic? In this episode of Health Literacy IRL, I sit down with Ellen Jones, PharmD , a pharmacist and faculty member who practices inside a DPC clinic in Arkansas. We dig into how the direct primary care model — and pharmacist-led services — can transform health literacy, medication management, and the patient experience....

Following on the heels of part 1, we'll continue discussing how to not only bring health literacy out of hiding within your health org, but how to connect disparate programs, initiatives, and materials more intentionally for the advancement of patient outcomes. In part 1, we discussed the first step: Identify. Listen to part 2 for the remaining 5 steps. Know someone who'd be an excellent guest? Co...

It can be common to feel disconnected from others within your organization who are also working on health literacy. This lack of awareness or connection can feel like difficult challenges to overcome, but it's worth it to take what time you can to identify where others are advancing health literacy initiatives — even by another name! — throughout your organization. Oftentimes, organizational healt...

Health literacy is a systemic problem, not an individual one. And all health institutions play a role in improving health literacy. In this episode, I expand on the difference between personal health literacy and organizational health literacy. Then we explore examples of organizational health literacy for: hospitals/health systems biopharma payors direct patient care Know someone who'd be an exce...

The estimated cost of low health literacy in the US ranges from $106 to $238 Billion-with-a-B annually. Even though low health literacy is often framed as an individual problem, it's really a systemic one. Welcome to the Health Literacy IRL podcast, where we'll explore how health institutions are assuming responsibility for the advancement of health literacy.