The Mayor and City Council of Rockford, Illinois, an urban community with over 55% of its 145,000 residents considered ?socially vulnerable? by the CDC (SVI ? .75)and nearly half in the highest percentage (SVI ? .90), has identified community health and health literacy as key priorities. With the Office of Minority Health grant, the city will launch a dedicated health literacy project working with the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) School of Medicine Office of Health Literacy (UIC-OHL), a federally designated Minority Serving Institution, which will provide subject matter expertise, quality improvement activities and program evaluation. The program will advance Healthy People 2030 objectives related to improving the quality and efficacy of communication between adult patients and their health care providers, with the goal of helping patients make better-informed personal decisions about their health in general and COVID-19 testing and prevention interventions in particular. The grant will allow the City of Rockford to form and lead a Health Literacy Task Force with influential community organization subgrantees including: the UIC School of Medicine; Crusader Community Health, a federally qualified health center; SwedishAmerican Hospital, a local health system; and Rockford Regional Health Council, a cross-sector, multi-stakeholder community health organization. The Task Force will develop, promote and implement a specific health literacy action plan, based on the city?s current disparities impact plan, and evidence-based and culturally and linguistically appropriate health literacy strategies. The Task Force will seek input and commitments from other community partners all connected through quarterly virtual townhalls and monthly newsletters. Additionally, five to eight individuals will serve as the Health Literacy Initiative?s Community Outreach Coordinators, providing input on implementation, tactical ideas and feedback on material de
velopment, as well as participating in community outreach initiatives. As part of the initiative, linguistically and culturally appropriate print, multimedia materials and toolkits will be created, distributed and available for download through the initiative?s dedicated website to empower partners. These materials will be provided in English, Spanish and other languages deemed necessary by the Task Force. The material development will incorporate input, feedback and ongoing messaging refinement from Community Outreach Coordinators to ensure readability, usability and effectiveness. These influencers will also serve as peer ambassadors for the program. Materials and resources will be promoted through an integrated communications campaign using a balanced approach of owned, earned and paid media aimed at addressing vaccine hesitancy and promoting health literacy. The grant will also allow us to encourage dedicated and ongoing participation by providing small sub-grants that support local events with churches and community organizations to educate their constituencies on health literacy topics. Downloadable partner toolkits will be offered with materials empowering them to host events on their own. Provider engagement, education and buy-in are critical parts of the proposed program. UIC-OHL will lead the development and availability of training seminars for health care providers on health literacy, health disparities and cultural competence, and will train participants on the initiative?s toolkits, ideally boosting participation with continuing medical education credits(CME). UIC-OHL is the City of Rockford?s partner for ongoing quality improvement activities and program evaluation. UIC-OHL will work with a research firm to conduct pre-, post-and midpoint surveys to measure progress on the stated goals and will provide the required quarterly reports on how the program is meeting its stated objectives.