Healthy Communities in Fulton County, Illinois HCFCI

The Healthy Communities in Fulton County, Illinois HCFCI project is a collaboration between the University of Illinois at Chicagos Library of the Health Sciences in Peoria UIC LHSP, the Western Illinois Universitys School of Nursing WIU SON, and public libraries in Fulton County. In this project, librarians, nursing professors, and nursing students will work with public libraries to provide health fairs for the public. A health sciences librarian will also provide information and training to public librarians and library staff and create an HCFCI online portal to provide an easy consolidated access point to NLM resources and programs. The health fairs will assess blood pressure and BMI for attending members of the public and will provide information and education about heart disease, health literacy, the National Institute of Healths NIHs program, and the National Library of Medicine's NLM's reliable information resources. The public library training will be based on the Stand Up for Health materials available through the National Network of Libraries of Medicine NNLM. Additionally, each participating public library will receive a health literacy kit, which will include materials available from the NNLM along with display stands and consumer health books for their collection.