Providing Monthly Health and Wellness Presentations in a Patient Library: Program Development and Brief Assessment

Objectives: To describe the development, implementation, and brief assessment of a lunch time health and wellness series of presentations on a variety of consumer health related topics. The presentations were held in the Community Health Education Center, a patient library located inside a large academic medical center and were open to patients, their families, community members, and academic and health care employees. Methods: We collaborated with marketing to identify topics and potential speakers. Topics included: stress, diabetes, healthy eating, care giving, depression, cancer, and others. Presentations were advertised via mass mail and flyers were posted in the library and relevant hospital waiting areas. Health displays were created for each topic and attendees were provided with a packet of health information. Presentations were conducted over the lunch hour and lunches were provided to facilitate employee and patient attendance. Participant attendance at each program was recorded. Attendees were asked to complete a short paper-based survey at the end of the presentation. Results: There were 39 health and wellness presentations from 2010 to 2014 in the library with a total of 974 attendees. The majority of the attendees were either health care employees (42%) or academic employees (39%); followed by other (8%), students (6%), and patients (5%). The majority of attendees were made aware of our programs through university and hospital mass e-mail (49.9%). Attendees rated the programs highly. On a scale of 1 (very bad) to 5 (very good), 69.6% rated the programs very good; 24.9% rated them good; 4.7% rated them average; 0.17% rated them bad; and 0.67% rated the programs very bad. Attendees responded that they were likely or very likely to attend another library program (99.5%) while only 0.5% responded that they were unlikely to attend another library health and wellness program. Conclusions: The programs were very well attended by academic and hospital employees who reported finding out about the programs through mass e-mail. The programs were rated highly by attendees and the majority of attendees responded they are likely to attend another program. Other methods of publicity need to be explored to reach more hospital patients/family members and community members, but overall the health and wellness programs have been successful