Rural Project Examples: Health literacy

Effective Examples

Farm Dinner Theater
Updated/reviewed August 2022

Need: To encourage farmers to make health and safety changes on their farms.
Intervention: Farm Dinner Theater is an event in which farmers and their families watch three 10-minute plays covering health and safety topics and then discuss solutions to the issues addressed in each.
Results: In a study, farmers who attended the plays were more likely to make changes and tell others what they learned, compared to farmers who received an educational packet with the same information.

Catalysts for Community Health
Updated/reviewed June 2023

Need: To increase access to health information in low-income and rural communities throughout the Midwest.
Intervention: The University of Missouri School of Information Science & Learning Technologies developed Catalysts for Community Health (C4CH), an interdisciplinary program designed to train Master of Library and Information Science students to expand health information resources for underserved communities.
Results: The cohort of 10 students graduated in summer of 2022.

Targeted Rural Health Education Project
Updated/reviewed May 2023

Need: Dual platform to both teach health literacy principles to health professions students and disseminate health information to rural populations.
Intervention: Writing project using community-specific public health data in order to write a plain language health education article suitable for publication in a rural newspaper.
Results: Since program start in 2017, nearly 50 students have successfully published their plain language health education articles in one or more rural newspapers in 3 states.

Coast to Forest: Mental Health Promotion in Rural Oregon
Added November 2021

Need: To promote mental health and prevent substance use disorders in Oregon.
Intervention: Coast to Forest strengthens local capacity through training and community education.
Results: In its first year, the project trained 195 individuals across Oregon in Mental Health First Aid and developed 36 county-level resource guides.

For examples from other sources, see: