INTERVIEW
Public libraries as a gateway to the NHS
Pilot projects looking at digital health discovered a common thread – that people who didn’t use NHS digital services were happy to do so in a public library. Here Ruth Carlyle, Head of Knowledge and Library Services (NHS KLS Leadership) at NHS England, tells Rob Mackinlay how the NHS and library partners have put this knowledge to use.
“IT all started in a very practical way,” Ruth says, “Through the National Health Liter- acy Partnership (
www.cilip.org.uk/health-and-dig- ital), we had 14 pilot sites, 13 of which were in public libraries. The pilot sites found that many people who could not use the NHS App were happy to be shown how to use the log-in functions on the NHS website (which has the same functionality as the NHS App) if shown how to do so by a staff member in a public library.”
Now a new scheme has been developed by NHS England and Libraries Connected as part of the National Health Literacy Partnership. It was launched on 28 October and will see the NHS providing public librarians with specific tools and support so they can play a key role in helping people to access health information and use the NHS App and
NHS.UK.
National Health Literacy Partnership Underpinning this work between sectors is the National Health Literacy Partnership which was formalised in January 2022. The signatories are CILIP, the national NHS Knowledge and Library Services team at NHS England, Librar- ies Connected and Arts Council England. The partnership aims to increase health literacy skills, including digital health literacy, and to enable individuals to find and use high-quality health information. It has produced a wide range of resources, including geodata (
https://healthliteracy.ge-
odata.uk/) to prioritise localities for interventions, training (
https://tinyurl.com/lfhLiteracy) and easy read resources (
https://library.nhs.uk/easy-read-for-health/).
30 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Rob Mackinlay (
rob.mackinlay@
cilip.org.uk) is a journalist at Information Professional
Huge interest and need
Support was building before the scheme even launched. “We have been overwhelmed by the scale of interest in this activity,” Ruth says. “We were aiming to have at least seven public library services involved, in order to have a geographic spread, but have had interest from over 50 library services.”
And the value of the project is not just its ambition for digital services, but also an acknowl- edgement that many people still need help in the physical world before making use of them. Ruth said: “When we were working with health literacy pilot sites in public libraries, one of the findings was that some people who may not have a smart- phone may feel confident to be shown how to set up an account or use the NHS A-to-Z by staff in a public library.”
October-November 2024
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