According to The Irish Times, a study in Ireland has found that unemployed people with literacy and numeracy problems who receive targeted training are almost three times more likely to move out of unemployment within a year than other unemployed people receiving the same training.
The Times reports that previously there has been no research on the experiences of unemployed people in Ireland with literacy and/or numeracy problems.
During the last week of May, WBEZ’s radio series Front & Center began airing a series about low literacy in the Great Lakes region. In an article on their Web site that accompanies the series, they run through a bulleted list of facts on the impact of low literacy. One of those bullets was: “Medication errors due to misread or misunderstood prescription labels cause up to 7,000 deaths each year.”
The inability to follow prescription instructions is a frequently used example to illustrate the challenges of low literacy. I’ve used it myself in material I’ve prepared for D.C. LEARNs and ProLiteracy. And it makes at least some logical sense. If prescription information is written at a level that is too difficult for people with low literacy to read, it’s not a stretch to assume that those people are more likely to make a mistake (and there is anecdotal evidence supporting this). But I wonder whether there is any hard data that actually shows how many people are directly harmed by people with low literacy misreading prescription labels.
The source for Front & Center‘s factoid above was derived from a 2005 American Medical Association publication that accompanied a White House Conference on Aging mini-conference on on health literacy and health disparities. Here is what that publication actually said:
All medications have the potential of causing harm as well as benefit, the incidence of adverse medication events increases with the number of medications. Medication errors are the most common medical mistakes – some as a result of misread or misunderstood prescription labels – causing up to 7,000 deaths each year and costing the health care system nearly $73 billion annually. Improving communications on medications can improve care, reduce errors, and save lives. (my emphasis)
The key word above is “some.” In other words, medication errors cause up to 7,ooo deaths annually, and the authors of this report think that some of those 7,000 are due to misread or misunderstood prescription labels. But even among that subset of the 7,000, it’s not stated how many misread or misunderstood prescription labels can be attributed to low literacy. Just because a label is misread or misunderstood, that doesn’t mean that low literacy was the cause. I have relatively high literacy and I misread things all the time.
I have passing familiarity with the literature on health literacy. I know there are studies on the relationship between low literacy and poor health, educational attainment and mortality rates, on the difficulties that people with low literacy have in understanding health information, or navigating the health care system, etc. What I’m specifically interested in is whether there is better data on the number of medication errors—and more importantly, the harm caused by those errors—that can clearly be attributed to low literacy adults misreading labels. Can anyone point me to a good source?
A group of faith based organizations, including the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, NETWORK, and the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, have written a letter to the Chairman and the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce expressing their concerns with the Republican’s Workforce Investment Act (WIA) reauthorization bill, H.R. 4297, which is scheduled to be marked up tomorrow at 10 am. It’s a good letter, because it focuses on the crux of what many seem to agree is the fundamental problem with the bill:
H.R. 4297 eliminates the current priority of service for low-income adults and those with barriers to employment. Without priority, dislocated workers, youth, older workers, and those in areas of highest unemployment would continue to be at a disadvantage. Low-income adults now represent only about half of those receiving intensive services or training services with adult employment and training funding, despite their increased rates of unemployment. Elimination of the priority of services, including necessary supportive services like child care and transportation, would further weaken access to these services to low-income adults and youth.
Rather than cutting back on the range of services needed by low-income individuals, low-wage workers, and those with barriers to employment, our interfaith community would prefer to see job training and job creation programs focus specifically on low-income communities and vulnerable populations. Unless special and specific efforts are made to include them, certain distressed communities with disproportionately high unemployment or low earnings will be left out of the mainstream economic recovery. Properly crafted WIA reauthorization legislation must consider populations with unique needs— such as people of color, displaced workers, workers with disabilities, older workers, low-income youth, and people with limited-English proficiency—by providing worker retraining, education assistance, job placement and other job related services. (my emphasis)
In fact, a WIA bill that “focused specifically on low-income communities and vulnerable populations” would be an interesting piece of legislation.
(Cross-posted on the D.C. LEARNs Blog)
An article today in The Washington Post on the J.C. Nalle Elementary School, the District’s sole community school, noted that the D.C. Council recently gave preliminary approval to spend $1 million in the District’s FY 2013 budget for a pilot program to establish five new community schools. I wanted to share Council Member Brown’s comments regarding the potential for community schools to address adult education needs (according to the article, the Nalle currently offers help to community members trying to obtain a GED):
“Schools have always traditionally been the anchor in the community,” says council member Michael Brown (I-At Large), who sponsored the measure. “And you can’t be an anchor if you’re just open from nine to three.”
In the council’s vision, he says, schools would serve as neighborhood beacons, catering to the needs of individual communities. One might offer an adult literacy program and another job training services. At Nalle, adults have been offered everything from conflict resolution classes to help with obtaining their GEDs.
The Post also provided a few details about the staffing and costs associated with the Nalle’s community school:
Unlike the District’s new pilot program, which will be paid for using city funds, Nalle operates through a 12-year partnership between the school system, the Freddie Mac Foundation and the National Center for Children and Families. Freddie Mac has contributed nearly $8 million to the school, and the National Center for Children and Families oversees the after-school program and employs four day-time staff members, including Sherman and two social workers.
Literacy & Policy 