Community Health Outreach Award: Promoting Healthy Communities: Health Equity Promotion to Public Librarians

The Public Library Association PLA will educate PLA members and other public library staff about implicit bias's connection to health equity and foster a deeper understanding of health literacy as a tool to address health equity within vulnerable communities. We will do this through multiple continuing education and promotional activities, including an Institute at the ALA 2019 Midwinter Meeting, a webinar, a Public Libraries journal article or other publication such as Quick Reads and podcast, and more. The work will create a baseline of knowledge about health equity among PLAs 10,000 members and inspire hundreds who participate in the continuing education experiences to assess their own library programs and services. To accomplish this, PLA will work with the ALA Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services ODLOS and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine Pacific Northwest Region NNLM-PNR to develop content for and promote a January 2019 3-hour educational Institute and, using that content, engage speakers and other experts to present on a subsequent webinar and podcast and write content for distribution through PLA channels.