Introduction & Background
Who am I?
I am a Research & Instruction Librarian for the Sciences at Wake Forest University's Z. Smith Reynolds Library in Winston - Salem, NC.
This project started with my acceptance as a fellow in the Medical Library Association's Research Training Institute 2022-23 cohort. This training supports and mentors health science librarian participants through a research project for 12-months.
With a BS in Health Promotions / Exercise Science from Auburn University and an MLIS from the University of North Carolina Greensboro, I chose to merge two of my favorite topics and focus my research on health information literacy and asking the question:
How can librarian instruction & support influence health information seeking and behaviors?
Why is this important?
Considering that...
The CDC declares that nearly 90% of adults in the US live with limited HL and supports the UnitedHealth Group research stating that improved HL could prevent 1M hospital visits and $25B a year in healthcare spending.
In 2020 (pre-pandemic), the Global Wellness Market exceeded $4T indicating that we spent trillions on weight loss, traditional medicine, therapies, wellness tourism, and a slew of other products and services.
Considering this age of information abundance where the World Health Organization declared the COVID pandemic also an "infodemic"... a term that was coined in 2003 during the SARS outbreak.
And with mobile users receiving up to 63 notifications per day, competing voices out there on Social Media, and increased awareness of human vulnerabilities…
… this topic is appropriate and timely.
WFU HES HELPS Programming
The Wake Forest University Health & Exercise Science (HES) department offers and manages HELPS (Health Exercise and Lifestyle ProgramS) employee wellness programs open to any faculty and staff member free of charge.
Two semesterly occurring programs are available:
1) H-WFU (Healthy Weight For You) has a specific weight management focus
2) TLC (Therapeutic Lifestyle Change) is a more broad, participant-focused goal track (sleep hygiene practices, fruit & vegetable intake, stress management, exercise modality exploration, etc.)
Library health information literacy workshops were incorporated into both programs during the 2022-23 academic calendar.