In the coming year, the UAMS Center for Health Literacy will pilot a new training course for health professionals on best practices to address health numeracy. Numbers are everywhere in health care—from lab results to risk assessment—yet more than half of American adults struggle with numerical health information. This new course will help health care professionals understand the prevalence of low health numeracy, explore the variety of numeracy skills that patients need to navigate numerical health information, and learn best practices in oral and written communication to help patients better understand and use numbers to manage their health.
To enhance our efficiency in the next year, we will begin testing AI to support our writing and editing process. Plain language writing and editing are challenging and time-consuming. New writers spend months learning this nuanced skill of translating complex medical communication into clear and plain information that people can understand and use. We aim to use AI to increase our capacity and efficiency, improve the quality and consistency of our work, and reduce editing turnaround times. Once in use, the AI model will allow our team to spend more time on training and consulting work.