Using educational games to promote the seeking of a pharmacist and to teach key medication use messages: results from an inner city health party.

BACKGROUND: Low health literacy affects 80-90 million Americans with low-income, minority populations being more vulnerable to this condition. One method of addressing limited literacy that may be particularly well accepted within vulnerable populations is the use of educational board games in order to emphasize seeking health information from reliable sources such as pharmacists. OBJECTIVE: The research objective was to determine if the use of educational board games could impact community pharmacy patron intentions to seek pharmacist advice in an urban, minority, economically-disadvantaged population. METHODS: Four medication-related educational games were played at an urban community pharmacy under the leadership of pharmacy students in the setting of a health party. Game messages, design, and evaluation processes were uniquely guided by community members' input. A verbally administered questionnaire measured game impact via knowledge and perception questions with responses compared between a non-randomly allocated intervention group and a control group. RESULTS: Ninety-nine adults were included in the intervention (or game) group and 94 adults were in the control group. Game participants were significantly more likely than the control group to indicate they would seek pharmacist medication advice in the future. CONCLUSION: Educational board games played in the setting of a health party can be a fun and effective way to convey selected health messages within an urban, minority, economically disadvantaged population. Community input into game development and layering multiple strategies for overcoming health literacy barriers were essential components of this initiative.

Relating print and speech: the effects of letter names and word position on reading and spelling performance.

From an early age, children can go beyond rote memorization to form links between print and speech that are based on letter names in the initial positions of words (Treiman & Rodriguez, 1999; Treiman, Sotak, & Bowman, 2001). For example, children's knowledge of the name of the letter t helps them learn that the novel word TM is pronounced as team. Four experiments were carried out to determine whether letter names at the ends of words are equally useful. Four- and five-year-olds derived little benefit from such information in reading (Experiments 1 and 3) or spelling (Experiment 2), although adults did (Experiment 4). For young children, word-final information appears to have less influence on reading and spelling performance than does word-initial information. The results help delineate the circumstances under which children can go beyond a logographic approach in learning about print.