A Collaborative Approach to Addressing Health Information Literacy among High School Students

up to 250 words): This poster reports on a collaboration between administrators of a local high school and Purdue faculty and professional staff in health communications, health information literacy, K-12 education, and fundraising. The purpose of the project is to develop health information literacy competencies in adolescents. This is a vulnerable population with significant health information needs. Teens are only beginning to develop life skills. They tend not to consult people who could advise them, such as parents or health professionals, about sensitive issues. They search for online information quickly and superficially without understanding the need to evaluate (or knowing how to evaluate) the information they find. Lacking these abilities, they cannot problem-solve or make decisions using reliable information. As young adults, they will be ill-equipped to deal with new health issues and questions that will arise for themselves, their families, friends, or communities. The standards for the required high school health course in Indiana stress the development of the ability to find, evaluate, use, and communicate health information. The project team developed an active learning, student-centered curriculum for the class which is being taught from late March to late May 2016. Each student will choose a health topic; find, evaluate, and synthesize information about it; and communicate about it by developing a web page on the topic. Peers and teachers will evaluate the pages. The students will give presentations so that they can teach each other about the health topics. A subsequent phase of the project will test the curriculum in other schools. A list of keywords (10 maximum): health information literacy; high school; curriculum