Influenza Vaccine Health Literacy Among UD Intensive English Program Students

In the United States, it is estimated that only 12 percent of adults have proficient health literacy. According to Zarcadoolas in Advancing Health Literacy, health literacy is defined as “the wide range of skills and competencies that people develop over their lifetimes to seek out, comprehend, evaluate, and use health information and concepts to make informed choices, reduce health risks, and increase quality of life.” For this project, our group was tasked with finding an original healthcare document in an area of interest or concern for UD’s Intensive English Program (IEP) students. The original document, a vaccine fact sheet from the Centers for Disease Control, was analyzed for readability using the SMOG test and Microsoft Word assessment, identifying the Flesch-Kincaid reading grade level. We also performed a Health Literacy Load Analysis. The original document was then revised to enhance the readability to the IEP students. The first revision was presented to IEP students to gain critical feedback. Though our original document was a more broad outline of how vaccines work, our team chose to focus on the influenza vaccine. This decision was made based on the questions and feedback IEP students provided us, specifically their interest in why some vaccines must be given multiple times. The students’ feedback was used to create a second and final revision of the original document aimed at making information about influenza vaccinations easier to read and understand. We were able to reduce the reading level of the original document to be more understandable and usable for IEP students.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/stander_posters/2631/thumbnail.jp