Preparing a Health Literate Workforce: The Role of Area Health Education Centers.

Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) play a vital role in creating health literate organizations. In this report, we highlight the work of three AHECs. The Massachusetts AHEC trains oral language healthcare interpreters who can effectively convey complex medical information to patients with limited English proficiency (LEP). The University of Kentucky AHEC trains providers to use the Universal Precautions Health Literacy Toolkit. Finally, the Wisconsin AHEC prepares community health workers (CHWs) to play a vital role in making it easy for people to navigate the healthcare system. These three AHECs serve as models of health literacy's diffusion.

Coordinated public health initiatives to address violence against women and adolescents.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a well-recognized public health problem. IPV affects women's physical and mental health through direct pathways, such as injury, and indirect pathways, such as a prolonged stress response that leads to chronic health problems. The influence of abuse can persist long after the violence has stopped and women of color are disproportionately impacted. Successfully addressing the complex issue of IPV requires multiple prevention efforts that target specific risk and protective factors across individual, interpersonal, institutional, community, and societal levels. This paper includes examples of community-based, state led and federally funded public health programs focused on IPV along this continuum. Two community-based efforts to increase access to mental health care for low income, women of color who had experienced IPV, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, and a telehealth intervention are discussed. Core tenets of a patient-centered comprehensive approach to assessment and responses and strategies for supporting a statewide comprehensive response are described in Project Connect: A Coordinated Public Health Initiative to Prevent Violence Against Women. Project Connect provides technical assistance to grantees funded through the Violence Against Women Act's health title and involves developing, implementing, and evaluating new ways to identify, respond to, and prevent domestic and sexual violence and promote an improved public health response to abuse in states and Native health programs. Health care partnerships with domestic violence experts are critical in order to provide training, develop referral protocols, and to link IPV victims to advocacy services. Survivors need a comprehensive response that addresses their safety concerns and may require advocacy around housing or shelter, legal assistance, and safety planning. Gaps in research knowledge identified are health system readiness to respond to IPV victims in health care settings and partner with domestic violence programs, effects of early IPV intervention, and models for taking interventions to scale.

BeLieving in Native Girls: characteristics from a baseline assessment.

BeLieving In Native Girls (BLING) is a juvenile delinquency and HIV intervention at a residential boarding school for American Indian/Alaska Native adolescent girls ages 12-20 years. In 2010, 115 participants completed baseline surveys to identify risk and protective factors. Initial findings are discussed regarding a variety of topics, including demographics and general characteristics, academic engagement, home neighborhood characteristics and safety, experience with and perceptions of gang involvement, problem-solving skills, self-esteem, depression, sexual experiences and risk-taking behaviors, substance abuse, and dating violence.