Lincoln Literacy Council & the Good Neighbor Community Center are recipients of the 2008 Community Health Endowment of Lincoln's Closing the Gap Award for their partnership in the Health for Everyone Program.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS are especially vulnerable to inequalities in healthcare due to inadequate health literacy, defined as the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions. Lack of health literacy can lead to misunderstandings in the healthcare setting, creating unnecessary costs and poor health outcomes for the patient.

To address this need, the Lincoln Literacy Council (LLC) has created
health literacy programs for refugees and immigrants in our community.
Their Healthy Living Literacy initiatives involve an award-winning Healthy Living Curriculum and successful partnerships with other non-profit agencies and healthcare providers. One program, Health for Everyone, is based on a partnership with the Good Neighbor community Center (GNCC). This collaboration began as a CHE grant and is now supported by the Dollar General Foundation.

Health for Everyone operates weekly at the GNCC throughout the
school year, offering participants, who are primarily Middle Eastern
women new to our country, a chance to become more deeply immersed in the important topic of health. Participants receive both native-language health instruction and English language health lessons from LLC tutors. Topics include the proper use of 911, emergency rooms, and health insurance. Class activities involve dental and general health screenings and fieldtrips.

The contributions of LLC and GNCC through this program are considerable: Most students have shown marked gains in their ability to use English to describe anatomy and symptoms, have demonstrated
improved knowledge of how to access the U.S. healthcare system appropriately, and have participated in health screenings that identified
numerous undiagnosed conditions.

CHE is proud to present this award to LLC and GNCC for their commitment to addressing health disparities, their dedication to collaboration, and their desire to make Lincoln a healthier community for all residents.

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