1. Dr. Mari-Amanda Dyal, Lyric Hayden-Lanier
Department of Health Promotion and Physical EducationORGANIZATION
The organization is a municipal workplace in
metro Atlanta, GA with an authorized strength of
1,500 individuals in a variety of job descriptions.
The organization houses an award-winning
wellness program that is comprehensive in
nature but incorporates specificity with design,
delivery, and evaluation.
The wellness program goes to great lengths to
provide evidence-based best practices that focus
on providing employees with knowledge, skills,
and application opportunities that improve
health. The latest push for programming
improvements is related to health literacy, which
has been identified as a priority area in the
healthcare setting but has only been recently and
minimally explored in the workplace setting.
PROGRAM PLAN
EVALUATION PLAN
PROGRAM IMPACT
Utilization of workplace health promotion
(WHP) programming to improve health literacy
“Occupational health literacy is the degree to which
workers have the capacity to obtain, communicate,
process, and understand occupational health and safety
information and services to make appropriate health
decisions in the workplace (Rauscher & Myers, 2008) .”
OHL Skill HRA Sample Item
Number
of Items
Reliability
Statistic (α)
Prose
Literacy
For the following passage, please
identify the risk factors for high
blood pressure.
5 .79
Document
Literacy
Using the provided BMI table, please
identify where you currently are.
5 .91
Numeracy
Using the provided food label, please
calculate the total fat grams for 2
servings
5 .88
Health
Literacy
Skill
Description
Prose
Literacy
Reading comprehension skills that involve critical searching and
scanning of continuous text materials, such as disease
management instructions, recommended guidelines, and general
educational materials (fact sheets, follow-up communication,
etc.).
Document
Literacy
Reading comprehension skills that involve critical searching and
scanning of disjointed text materials, such as medical history
forms, HRA results, and Explanation of Benefits (tables, graphs,
etc.).
Numeracy
Reckoning skills required to identify and perform computations,
either alone or sequentially using numbers embedded in printed
material (food labels, cost comparison, etc.).
Figure 1: Description of Health Literacy Skills
WHP within the organization provides a wellness
package of knowledge and skills that seek to
improve outcomes on several levels: promotion,
prevention, treatment, management, and
diagnostic. While knowledge and skills are
important, an employee’s ability to obtain,
process, and understand the knowledge and
skills is equally important, which sets the stage
for occupational health literacy (OHL), a concept
defined by Rauscher and Myers (2008) that
influences the degree to which employees make
appropriate health decisions in the workplace.
The healthcare setting has identified specific
skills for health literacy that improve knowledge
and skill acquisition, application, and adherence.
While these skills have been designed for
measurement within the healthcare setting, the
current research demonstrates a translation
appropriate for the workplace setting that
provides guidance for assessment and
improvement of OHL in WHP programming.
Specific health literacy skills that have been
identified are prose literacy, document literacy,
and numeracy. Other skills are related to
language, communication, and critical inquiry.
The Consumer Assessment Surveys (CAS, 2012)
provides a comprehensive set of items that
assess health literacy in the healthcare setting. A
subset of these items was modified for the
workplace in order to provide a relevant method
for measurement of OHL.
Incorporating OHL into WHP programming
underwent several forms of evaluation on both a
qualitative and quantitative level. An annual
health risk assessment (HRA) with the modified
items from the CAS provided data that was used
to determine increases/decreases in OHL.
Various qualitative assessments evaluated
impact and meaningfulness of OHL in WHP
programming. Exit interviews followed specific
program offerings to assess immediate
absorption of OHL:
“Following the grocery store tour, were you able
to use the food labels to make healthy choices?”
Focus groups evaluated the place of OHL in WHP
programming:
“Has the translation of health literacy into the
workplace been observable and measurable?”
HRA data continues to show increases in
occupational health literacy among program
members, more specifically 29% experienced an
overall improvement in FY2013-14 (n=383) with
specific skill increases outlined in Table 1.
Program planning has incorporated several
improvements based upon exit interviews and
focus groups:
• Emphasis on critical review of health promotion
print materials (continuous/disjointed)
• Skill-based offerings that promote practice with
tabulating percent values of intake and output
• Behavior change offerings that focus on
communication between practitioners and
partakers.
Research and practice implications for this OHL
translation set the stage for further steps to
incorporate all health literacy skills into WHP
programming so that employees can be well-
informed consumers of knowledge and skills in and
out of the workplace.
REFERENCES
Figure 2: Sample Items of OHL Skills
35%
69%
45%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
HRA Data (FY 2013-2014)
Prose Literacy
Document Literacy
Numeracy
Table 1: Quantitative Assessment (n = 383)
Consumer Assessment Surveys (2012). Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD.
Rauscher, K. J., & Myers, D. J. (2008).
Socioeconomic disparities in the prevalence of work-
related injuries among adolescents in the United
States. Journal of Adolescent Health, 42, 50-57.