Welcome to Refugee Health - Vancouver

Refugee Health Vancouver is a practical resource to support clinicians who provide care to refugees in British Columbia.

Need a patient handout on diabetes in Farsi? Looking for a Spanish-speaking dentist in Vancouver who offers reduced fees? Not sure what convention refugees are, why they would flee Myanmar, or how you can bill to care for them? This site pulls together the answers for you.

For comments, suggestions and corrections please contact us.

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Medical Guidelines

Health literacy toolbox lesson plans

  • Health Literacy can be defined as the ability to access, understand, evaluate, and communicate information as a way to promote, maintain and improve health in a variety of settings across the life-course (Canadian Public Health Association, 2008).
  • The Canadian Council on Learning (2007) reports that sixty-percent of Canadians lack the skills necessary to manage their health adequately.
  • Newcomers to Canada face even greater challenges (Canadian Public Health Association, 2008).
  • As clinicians, we are trained to manage our patients’ acute and chronic medical conditions. However, we are not equipped to assess and promote health literacy and settlement in clinical practice.
  • Health Literacy tools are needed to assess and promote print literacy, oral literacy, and numeracy skills as part of primary care in refugee health.
  • (more: Introduction)
Submitted by martina on June 19, 2011

Settlement Stamps Guide:

Settlement stamps can be used at each primary care encounter to assist with the assessment of health literacy and overall settlement. 

Calendar Individual Lesson Plan:

A step-by-step lesson plan to assess and promote calendar literacy.

Medication List Individual Lesson Plan:

A step-by-step lesson plan to assess and promote medication knowledge and adherance. 

Business Card Holder Guide for Use:

Tips for using a business card holder to assess and promote patient self-management of their health care and settlement needs. 

 

Creative Commons License 

Health Literacy Toolbox Lesson Plans by Lynn Farrales is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The above lesson plans were created to share one approach for using the tools. They are a work in progress and meant to be modified as needed for different contexts, while maintaining respect for patient preference, choice and input. They have not yet been validated.

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Written by Lynn Farrales MD (June 19, 2011)
Reviewed/updated by Martina Scholtens MD (September 29, 2015)