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Family Health and Literacy: A Guide to Easy-to-Read Health Education Materials and Web Sites for Families - English

Family Health and Literacy: A Guide to Easy-to-Read Health Education Materials and Web Sites for Families

This guide is designed to help integrate health and literacy education in family literacy programs. Resources are included that are deemed to be helpful to both family literacy teachers, and health educators and practitioners who work with parents with limited literacy skills. For teachers, there is a chapter on how to get started teaching health, which provides some context for how to include health topics in their curriculum. This includes ideas on how to introduce health, how to engage learners, how to enhance literacy and language acquisition using health, and how to collaborate with local health organizations. There are also listings of easy-to-read health information, lesson plans and teaching activities, online activities to use in class, and activities and games for parents and children to do together. Health educators and practitioners can also benefit from the easy-to-read health information, online activities, and ideas for collaborating, which include tips on communicating clearly with adults with limited literacy skills.

The health topics and types of materials listed here were chosen to meet the health information needs of parents in family literacy programs as identified by a national survey of family literacy teachers. All resources had to meet selection criteria developed with guidance from an advisory group of family literacy and health experts to ensure accuracy and appropriateness. Almost all of the resources listed are available for free online. Family Health and Literacy (2006) is also available online at www.worlded.org/us/health/docs/family.