IWHIL 2011

INTRODUCTION

Health is one of the basic necessities for the excellence in the quality of life. Health information can play a vital role for building healthy nation of a country. In this era of information, libraries are regarded as access centres of all kinds of human knowledge. A number of publications on health and health related subjects have been published within seconds throughout the world facilitatedby the application of Information and communication Technologies (ICTs). For this reason, it is quiet hard for information professionals, researchers, health workers, and students to find, evaluate and make effective use of the needed information. To cope up with this situation, libraries are evolving of information literacy programs for their patrons and health information literacy can play a pivotal role to empower communities and nations in meeting their regular health information needs. In this age of information and communication technology, Health Information Literacy (HIL) program becomes a multifaceted task which is frequently varying due to the technological innovation. Librarians need to be more competent to teach its patrons on health information literacy skills and to empower them as lifelong learners and critical thinkers.

This workshop will play a very significant role to launch this emerging and vital tool in regional libraries or health institutions to enable the librarians, researchers, health workers, students to play more effective role to ensure the best utilization of information resources to fulfill their health information needs. It may be mentioned that this training on HIL will be held for the first time in Bangladesh.
OBJECTIVES

1. To create awareness of health information literacy among students, researchers, faculty and library and information professionals

2. To provide hands on training about when and why health information is needed where to find that information, how to evaluate, communicate, and use the health information in an ethical and legal manner.

3. To develop critical thinkers and independent learners, as well as training resources for quality education, research, and capacity building among the stakeholders at academic institutions

 
TARGET GROUP
 

This program mainly designed for the library and information professionals, health professionals, researcher, students, faculty members from different universities, colleges, NGOs of Bangladesh and other countries of the world.

 
DIRECT BENIFIT
 

Participants can enrich their knowledge with this modern tool of information use. They will also be able to initiate HIL in their respective libraries and they can play an important role for improving the Health information literacy in their respective organization.

INDIRECT BENIFIT
 

Colleagues, participants, local librarians, and all the users of their libraries will be benefited from this program.

OUTCOME
 

This is an innovative pilot project in Human resources development in Health Information Literacy. As such, it has a high potential for replication. A similar approach can be initiated with other Asian partner countries. It would generate formal training material to be utilized at all universities in Bangladesh, and also create a ripple effect elsewhere.

The project outcome will allow the professionals to promote health information literacy for the health and wellness of one and all. It will increase possibility of collaboration between governments, private organizations, universities and international organizations as this is one of the promising area for further innovation.