HealthEd Blog

Congratulations To Rita Williams On Rising Star Nomination

HealthEd’s Rita Williams, MA, CHES, has been nominated for the Cancer Patient Education Network (CPEN)  
Rising Star Award for her work in cancer education. This awards those with less than 10 years developing cancer patient education programs. The highlights of Rita’s oncology work at HealthEd include:

• Patient and HCP educational needs assessments
• A comprehensive educational program for metastatic breast cancer patients, including counseling materials and an educational Web site
• Resource kits for multiple myeloma and advanced kidney cancer patients
• Regular contributions of articles and resources to SurroundHealth, an online learning community for healthcare extenders sponsored by HealthEd Academy

Please join us in wishing Rita the best of luck. If awarded this prestigious honor, Rita will be recognized on September 20^th at the 2012 International Cancer Education Conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

 

Mary Lou Szekeres
Client Development Manager
HealthEd

 

Health Literacy And Numeracy: What This Means For Diabetes Patients

Recently HealthEd’s Erika Heiges, MPH, CHES, published an informative article in MDPA Magazine on how poor numeracy, can affect diabetes patients’ ability to self-manage. MDPA Magazine is focused on disease prevention with articles on areas such as obesity, diabetes, minority health issues and exercise. Having worked for years developing educational programs, Erika has found that supporting numeracy skills is critical in developing patient education to help patients manage their treatment. Patients with poor numeracy skills are likely to find it challenging to understand and use the health information they receive. Erika’s article, “Numeracy: A Key Component of Health Literacy,” details what this means for patients’ health and its impact on diabetes self-management skills.

 

Mary Lou Szekeres
Client Development Manager
HealthEd

 

 

The Importance of Care Partner Support

Recently a colleague of mine passed on after a six-year-long battle with brain cancer. He was in his thirties and left behind two young sons and his wife who is a living angel.  Personally, there are many important things I will take away from this. He never lost faith. He lived his life with passion and fought to the end. He was always happy and thankful for all that he had in his life.

Professionally, I had some takeaways as well. My colleague worked in pharmaceutical marketing and certainly was an educated patient. However, his wife was the pillar who held everything together. Caring for him, understanding and researching treatments, getting him into clinical trials, fundraising…whatever it was, she was essential to it all.

Sometimes illness can be as challenging for the care partner as for the patient. While it certainly is important for the patient to understand their treatment and side effects, it is also critical for the care partner to equally understand. Additionally, they need support to help their loved one handle treatment, as many times, especially with cancer, it can be a difficult process.

When you consider that 29% of the US population (over 65 million people) provides care for a chronically ill family member or friend, this is a large audience with a tremendous need for resources. These people spend an average of 20 hours per week caring for their loved one, all while potentially balancing a job, care of their children, and the stress of everyday life.

So how can we help care partners? When we develop resources for patients, we should address the needs of the care partner as well. Care partners need the same information that patients do, such as disease understanding, treatment expectations, and side effects. As for patients, all care partner materials should be presented in a health literate way while utilizing adult learning principles such as analogies or storytelling to aid understanding.

Additionally, care partners can benefit from help with the following:

Practical tips on:

• How to give care
• Managing appointment schedules
• Navigating insurance claims
• Accessing treatment

Emotional help with:

• Providing emotional support to the patient
• Recognizing the signs of depression in the patient
• Coming to terms with the diagnosis and being realistic about it
• Enlisting the support of others for driving, cleaning, meals etc
• Utilizing social media to garner support from friends and family
• Finding support groups

Personal needs such as:

• Taking care of themselves and their health
• Staying positive
• Keeping up with their own interests and activities

While nothing can ease the pain of having a loved one who is ill, certainly the right resources can help care partners cope. In turn, the care partner will be better enabled provide emotional and physical care and help the patient with their treatment.

Mary Lou Szekeres
Client Development Manager
HealthEd