The Centre for Literacy won three awards in 2002 for excellence and for community leadership

L-R: Alain Bouvier, Canada Post, Linda Shohet, Centre for Literacy, Louis Lavoie, Actor, Jean Marie Martin, National Literacy Secretariat, and Sylvie Bergeron, Salon du livre de l’Estrie

ATEQ Award for Leadership and Innovation

Linda Shohet, Executive Director of The Centre for Literacy, was given the 2002 ATEQ Award for outstanding leadership and innovation in English Language Arts in the province of Quebec. Given annually by the Association of Teachers of English in Quebec, this year’s award, recognizing Shohet’s work at The Centre, was made on Thursday, April 25, at the McGill University Faculty Club during the opening of the annual Springboards conference.

Canada Post Award

In October 2002, The Centre was presented with the Canada Post Literacy Award for Community Leadership for the province of Quebec at a ceremony at L’Universite de Sherbrooke. [See photo above.]

Quebec Writers' Federation COMMUNITY AWARD 2002

In November 2002, The Centre won the Quebec Writer’s Federation Community Award. This prize was created in 1995 to honour outstanding involvement in, and contributions to Quebec’s English-language literary life. The text in the Awards Ceremony booklet read: This year’s Community Award goes to The Centre for Literacy of Quebec and its director, Linda Shohet. Literature by definition requires a literate audience. But anyone who has watched a child learn to read knows that this audience is created by hard work and perseverance. For some children learning to read is a task so difficult that its consequences haunt them throughout life. This is where The Centre for Literacy comes in. Through its support for educators, conferences, readings and community programs, The Centre for Literacy helps people learn to read – building and maintaining the audience for literature that is so critical to our own community. Our thanks and our congratulations go out to them.

Health Literacy Project, Phase 2 More than Plain Language: Adapting Health Communication for Hard-to-Reach Patient The Centre for Literacy of Quebec © 2002 ISBN 0-9689593-6-9 Production of this document was made possible by a financial contribution from the Population Health Fund, Health Canada, and from Heritage Canada. To order: Send $10 each for the Report and Executive Summary, or $15 for both documents, to The Centre for Literacy. Or visit the website and link from the front page.

More than Plain Language: Adapting Health Communication for Hard-to-Reach Patients

Health Literacy Project Report available

The Report and a bilingual Executive Summary on Phase 2 of the Health Literacy Project at the Montreal General Hospital are now available in print or on our web site. Entitled More than Plain Language: Adapting Health Communication for Hard-to-Reach Patients, the report documents the creation of three hospitalbased participatory education committees with patients, family and professional members, under the guidance of a Project Steering Committee.

The education committees decided on one priority health message in each of the three units to be developed in different formats and media designed to reach hard-toreach patients. Using principles of plain language and design and translating some materials into languages other than English or French, the Project ended up with multiple versions of the messages. Although there was no formal assessment of the materials at this stage, selected patients gave informal feedback in each unit. This seemed to indicate that patients who were considered “hard-to-reach” still had difficulty even with simplified materials. However, many mainstream patients were very pleased with the clear and appealing materials.

An independent evaluator worked with the Steering Committee throughout the project. He focused on the development process – the function of the Steering Committee and the creation and function of the participatory eductaion committees, One of his most encouraging findings was that staff on all three units now have a high level of awareness of literacy as a barrier to understanding and take it into account when they communicate with patients.

The Montreal General Hospital currently has a Health Literacy web page on its intranet describing the project and outlining the concept with links to resources chosen by the librarian at The Centre. Now the entire McGill University Health Centre has access to the background, materials, and findings from this project, as well as to general research on health literacy.

The Report describes the project model, the materials, and outlines the evaluation findings and recommendations for the next stage.

The Centre’s web site also has links to web-based health literacy resources accessible from the front page.