Sharing advocacy and asking for your feedback

with Jo Medlin

Part of the 2022 stretched conference

Webinar link available to members here

This webinar is a presentation made on behalf of ACAL to the National Medicines Symposium, 30th May 2022. The symposium topic was health literacy and it included researchers, medical experts and organisations presenting case studies on health literacy initiatives. The role for ACAL was to set the scene and help attendees understand what challenges might be faced by patients, people using the medicines they produce, and by people seeking health information online or in person.

In this recording, Jo Medlin (ACAL President) presents a 20 minute keynote speech, covering statistics, examples of texts that might be challenging, and ways to talk about adult literacy and numeracy. This is followed by questions from Adam Spencer, who was the MC.

Since the health symposium, Jo has presented similar talks to legal centres in NSW and to a wide range of NSW government department representatives. Acknowledging the use of PIAAC statistics as questionable, given how old they are, Jo reports that feedback was very positive and that presenting real examples of texts seemed to make the issue real for attendees, as opposed to thinking of this as stats  or as a minor issue.

However, we are interested in feedback about how advocacy could be improved when we are talking ‘outside the field’ to the people who actually write the documents and processes so many adults struggle with. Please consider the points raised in this presentation and the Q&A session and send your constructive feedback to info@acal.edu.au   We look forward to hearing from you.