 up in the back table and when it comes, feel free to get up and get your coffee, but let's try to, you know, not everybody get up and go get coffee at once, and what I'm going to do right now is just go ahead and turn it over to Ann, who's going to tell us a little bit about yourself and introduce the panelists, one of our panelists is still on route, but you can still keep a bio and we'll turn it over. Thanks so much for being here. Well, good morning. My name is Ann Hyman. I am the director of library services at Bryan LGH here in town. The Bryan LGH Medical Center library, it's the library for the hospital and it's also the library for our College of Health Sciences. So we serve the nursing and health professions programs and then we also serve everything from the physicians to the respiratory therapists to the administrators. Anybody who works in the medical center uses our services. So I am pleased to be here today and I'll be introducing our esteemed panelists and kind of moderating through making sure they don't talk too much. We're going to start with Josie. Josie Rodriguez is the consumer outreach coordinator for Nebraska Attorney General's Office. Josie has worked for the state of Nebraska for 14 years, previously working for the Nebraska Health and Human Services System. Josie's responsibilities include providing information and education on issues of consumer fraud, scams, identity theft and other consumer protection issues to Nebraska residents. Josie also directs the senior anti-fraud education program in which she and senior volunteers across the state inform senior residents of individuals working with seniors about frauds and scams prevalent among the senior population and what tools they can use to guard against consumer fraud. Josie has a bachelor's of science degree in human and social service administration and a master's of science in health care administration. So I will turn it over. Alright. I want to thank Shuman for inviting me to speak here. When she asked me I thought well it's a little bit out of my area but I did work for Health and Human Services as she says. Now it's been changed back because the years just start flying by and it's crazy. I've been there for about 18, the state for 18 years I've worked for them. Previously with the Department of Health and Human Services I worked in Lexington. I worked as a social service worker but then my last talk with them was with the Office of Minority Health and what I did there was really work with community agencies, health care agencies and minority populations to further efforts of minority health and with our office we really have to start out just from scratch. With public health monies that were given across the state we were able to open an Office of Minority Health, the congressional district and so there was really nothing out there and so it's kind of it is about building alliances and working with individuals to try to really get your work done. So that's kind of how it really rolls over into what I do now. Right now I work for the Attorney General's Office I work in Consumer Protection. How many of you are familiar with our Consumer Protection Division? A few. You know it's interesting because I think the outreach is all about networking and telling people what you do. It's kind of like we always say if you have that one minute in the elevator with somebody important what are you going to say about your program and I think that that's really what it's about. So for those of you that don't know what I do you know a lot of people know that our office exists but they don't know the extent of what we do. One of the major divisions is our Public Protection Bureau and in that is Consumer Protection and what we do is we help consumers fight frauds and scams. There's a lot of individuals that are taking advantage of bad business practices or different frauds and scams and so I educate consumers about that and what to do. Specifically I work with seniors. I do a lot with seniors and you know they are a target population that is taking advantage of Austin. I do a lot of presentations at senior centers. I actually it's interesting because I had communicated with Gary before this this panel discussion and so as I said earlier it's all about networking and trying to get those individuals where you can talk to audiences. Part of it also is about finding audiences that are already established. I do a lot of this earlier at senior centers because we know that the seniors are there and they gather there and so that's an important piece for me about doing that outreach and I also think that partnering with so many different agencies is important. You know you don't think about sometimes we're stuck inside of the box and I think we need to look outside of the box and see well how can I do outreach to more individuals. You know probably at something like this people maybe have read the agenda and thought okay well why is somebody from the Attorney General's Office here and so I'm just going to talk about my experiences and how I make those contacts, how I get those contacts. I really try to attend a lot of different outreach sessions but also presentations, conferences that are going on because you may think that somebody isn't really that topic isn't related but it is. I think it's all kind of like the social piece of what we do even though you may work in public health I think that there's still a piece in there where if somebody is going through a fraud or scam or has lost a lot of money and something that can affect their overall health and well-being. So I think that anytime that we can get our consumers information that will help them in whatever aspect I think is a good way for us to go. So I think it's important as I said to really not just think about the people in your field but also think about how other area how other individuals can help you know I work with Jim Peterson and helping human services. Nixon never really thought about how you know cancer you're still in the cancer area right how maybe we could do that but I'm sure that they probably put on different presentations and stuff we do a lot of health fairs we're involved in a lot of health fairs as well and some people think it's not related but I really do think that it's related to overall health and well-being of how I guess people perceive what happens to them and how it affects their health. So I also work with a lot of different churches and community-based agencies I think that partnering is key collaboration is key working with as many individuals as you can why reinvent the wheel if there's no need to. I work a lot with the area agency on aging offices as well because they have individuals that go out to different communities and give presentations also like the SHIP program they go out and give presentations if I can work with them and build that relationship with those individuals that are going out there why not tag team and take some time you know maybe even if it's 10 minutes it gives me an opportunity to talk about our program and what we do and how we can help individuals. Another thing that I want to talk about was you know being connected with the people that you serve often times and you serve a lot of different populations and yet I'm not a senior but I think that it's really being able to talk to them at their level understand some of the concerns that they have so that they do feel that trust and relationship with the possess what it's about and with our office it's also about that integrity when I talk to people about fraud and scams and how they can use our office as a resource I need to follow up with those phone calls that they make to me and if they have a concern help them may not fall within our office but then help them and guide them to where they need to go I think it's part about that because if you're going to do outreach it's important for you to follow through and have somebody trust what you're going to do and do what you say you're going to do the other thing I wanted to talk about was flexibility you know a lot of people work eight to five and sometimes you can't do the outreach to individuals eight to five I was recently at the State Fair the main State Fair in Grand Island and you know it's important to do those types of things and to get out to more individuals we've also even been at a farm and rancher show in Omaha it's interesting because people say what is the attorney general's office doing here you heard that check on us or something it's like no no you know that's a population that we usually don't see and if we can get our information out to them because they're consumers just like anyone else it's it's important to so try those avenues see if they work it may not you may not get the response that you want at least you make the attempt to do that also talking about flexible hours it's not to set it's not just between eight and five it's sometimes on Saturdays I work a lot with Hispanic population here in the state as well and so I do presentations on Saturdays and times on Sundays I think it's very important to be flexible I know that sometimes it's hard but I think that they see that you're making that effort and in going to them when they can when they have the time to hear the information I think that's important as well of course clarity of your goals and objectives is important as well we all know that I think that's a no-brainer there knowing where you want to go and how you're going to get there another important piece I think for me is really knowing the resources that are available not only in your area but knowing resources you know I'm saying like not in public health but the library is a vast you know resource where individuals can go and get information that's why I thought you know when Gary called me I thought that was a great opportunity for our office to get involved with the library because a lot of people go to the library for information if we can have our information there that's that much better and that many more consumers that maybe will be able to help now and in the future our office has worked with a lot of different not only state but community organizations we have our program it's this our senior anti-fraud education program I'm I coordinate it but we have many volunteers throughout the state so that's another opportunity if you have an outreach program is to think about maybe are there volunteers out there that can help me spread the word because I'm not sure how your programs work but I know me going across the state that's it's too much it's you know our state is is very it's very vast and you know how long it takes to get from one end to the other so if you can find people out there that can be your voice in those smaller communities I think that that's key as well we do provide training to our individuals and like I said we work with SNP the state Medicare Patrol and the SHIP program which is the senior health information program and they have volunteers so if I can find a volunteer that's also interested in spreading our news that's better for me and that's more information that I can get out into a lion's or false city or all those smaller towns where maybe it'll be harder for me to get to now talk a little bit about being reliable and trustworthy it's also important to be creative now there are different ways that I can bring my message out to the communities I think so I think it's important to like I said earlier think outside the box how can we get our message out to different communities and that doesn't just include seniors and children or youth but it also includes minority populations how can I reach those minority populations and let them know about our services and resources the panel the individuals here include public health is that right from health where's everyone from public health and human services yes so if you're from a library and you feel that you know our information would be important to have out there let me know like I said even public health I think it's important I know I did a presentation a couple years ago with the public health center in Columbus so like I said it's all to me related socially let's see here too talked about going to where people are already at and meeting them at the time that they can meet kind of think what else yes and I will I will bring brochures as well so you can see I think it's also important when you're developing information your resources when we developed our program for our senior population we made it in a way where it's better visual for them we there's a lot of individuals that may have macular degeneration so we did it in large font so think about those populations that you're working with and are they going to be able to read your materials if it is in the smaller font I know we all want to get as much as we can in our materials but really you need to think about the people that you're serving in are they going to be able to read it and access them so do we take questions yeah we can have gosh between 200 places open at one time yeah we take a lot of complaints from individuals I always tell individuals that call us in our description will forward it on to those that it does really a lot of individuals that maybe get bills from hospitals or places that they've gone and they filled with the billing it's a billing error if it's Medicare we may refer it on to the state Medicare patrol if we see there's a Medicare issue there but if it's not we have a lot with Medicare billing issues so if there's a issue you know something like that we can help that way there's a lot of different things I'm trying to think there's another you know we may even have a complaint against a company where they're not providing the services if they're supposed to we may send a letter from our office and just ask the questions you know is there maybe there's a lack of communication between the organization and the consumer so it's really about communication between the consumer our office and the organization itself so those are some of the types of health related we do get a like I said Medicare complaints as well we get some complaints from health care services maybe health plans people that are selling different types of health plans so I think it's just important for you all to know about the resource because people might come to you they might come to the public health department if you're an agency that they feel is trustworthy they're going to come to you with a lot of different things as many you may know and not just their specific health related question being about diabetes or something they might come to you with other things that come up and makes have fine one of these fake checks and talk to your receptionist or somebody about it I think it's important to know the resources of your office that you can help them which in turn brings them back to you again for everything else so how do you how do you find the like you talked about and I think it's great that outside the box that showing up at the Columbus Public Health how do you how do you get that started you know like I said it's important to do things like this other events that are available and networking is key I think I'm not sure Gary how you heard how you called me but I think that there's also an individual that goes to our to the South Omaha community council meetings if there's a meeting that involves a lot of different maybe helping human services or social organizations that work socially I think that's key to be at in Omaha there's a South Omaha community care council and it is comprised of organizations throughout South Omaha and Omaha South Lincoln different communities and they just talk about what their organization does how they can help consumers and there you really find a lot of opportunities to speak that you have the opportunity to you know give your two-minute elevator talk and that's where people can hear what your program is about and have the opportunity to ask you what can you come out and speak to our organization what do you do how can you help our consumers things like that I think the other piece is Board of Mal you know somebody here's you speaking at an event they like what they hear of course they're going to spread that on we do a lot of senior affairs as well we haven't happened up in Columbus and one in harmony I work with a lot of retirement facilities as well so a lot of it is doing that work on your own finding those organizations you know we have a list of senior centers and just calling calling them and seeing if you can come out and speak to them I think one of the things I'm sure a lot of you have found that is if you go to a health fair of course it's great to have the interaction with the people that come to your booth but a lot of times it's the other people and that's how you build the network. Do you have other questions for Josie? I had a question I was just curious about if there's anything you do about tracking like if you go to one of these fairs and then somebody calls you because of that fair I mean how do you analyze or gather statistics on if that outreach is working? You know I do I do ask them where they heard about our office and so I try to track that I track the presentations that we did how many individuals come so I think that is important especially when you're trying to clarify your goals and objectives how am I going to meet this goal is it because you know I was we had an ad in the paper was it because we did an outreach session so yeah I mean we do track that to keep track of are we you know when I go to the senior center am I getting a referral from a senior that's there maybe visiting from another senior center so we do have evaluation forms as well and we track that as well. Are there any other questions? It seems like there's a lot of confusion particularly with seniors about medications. We do we do not put those types of complaints as well there are a lot of things that are going on on the internet you know there's a lot more individuals using the internet and I think people are getting so much correspondence by mail too they just don't know what to what to if it's reliable or not so yeah we work with consumers and letting them know and if it does come from outside of the country be wary we send out a lot of newsletters as well that's important we have whenever we're at an event we ask individuals if they would like to sign up for our to be on our mail and that will create information that's sent to them on different types of products and scams but yeah we try to educate them and and let me just go go back a little bit and tell you what our senior program is about we talk about charity fraud we talk about pep about market telemarketing fraud investment fraud we do try to talk about internet scams there's a lot of things that come through the internet and some of those are the prescriptions you know they're trying to find ways that they can save money so if there's a wonderful opportunity out there they're going to try to take advantage of it so we do tell them just be careful what you are getting in the mail call us without you know before you act on anything we say give us a call and let us know because oftentimes they will send that money and they won't get the product or yeah we can sure try to help with that those are things you know we can tailor a presentation if you know you think it likes to kind of tailor it to if you would like to talk about more healthcare fraud we can do that as well so we can kind of tailor work last year our office helped consumers get back over a million dollars one thing three million dollars a lot of people like I said they don't even know that our consumer protection division exists and you know we're really helping individuals consumers overall not just seniors get back a lot of money that is lost in either a fraud or scam or bad business practice and oftentimes people say well you know how could I be ignorant and talk to that and all of us are potential victims you know we don't think about it and some artists really are they're savvy and they can really trick us into divulging information so I tell individuals you need to let us know what's going on because we can't help if we don't know what's going on yes how well do you work within the state government then and other divisions and all that how does that all tie together in terms of like policy policy well or just just in general too you know well like I said we collaborate with banking and finance department of revenue the secretary of state we work with a lot of different state agencies as well as community agencies on you know finding the best thing for the consumer I think that's the key is how can we help the consumer be at public health you know via HHS via our office how can we help the consumer and there's a if banking and finance can help better than we can then we refer it on to them so we have really good relationships with you know the the FBI you know we work with the Consulate of Mexico we work with so many different agencies and that's where it's key to go to networking events where you can meet these individuals because some of you you know even the Consulate of Mexico you may not think that it's public health related but really it could be they have them they have an area that is about health literacy and health education and so that may be one contact that you may want to make through that so and if that's something that you're interested in I you know I have that contact to you can show that in the mail but it's thinking different thinking outside the box and how can I you know do outreach to different consumers in fact the Consulate of Mexico and Omaha has a clinic a health clinic that students at Creighton are there probably four hours a day three or four days a week so yeah that's I mean that is the outside the box piece that Josie brings is it's amazing to see what these other organizations are really up to and how can we get involved in that and you know and it's not only a lot of people thankful we can't mix government church things like that I do a lot of presentations at different churches and it's important that people are there they want the education and so like I said earlier it's you have to go to where the individuals are at and really where the need is because a lot of times they bring those concerns to their pastor or different clergy in that church and who can help them and if they don't know the resources then how are they going to help their consumers so I think that it's important to find those key people in areas where you think your consumers are going to go to you know the library the churches consulate different places where they're gonna really take those questions to and if your resource that can help you need to be on that list thank you very much that was wonderful okay we're gonna move on and we're gonna move on to Gary Gary is it wasn't in January 2010 so thank you here to become the new director of the Omaha Public Library prior to Omaha Gary was the assistant dean of libraries at the University of Alabama and the director of staff development at New York Public Library previous positions including serving as director of the Fogelman Library at the new school and the head of access services at Weston University Gary has an MLS and an MS in English from Southern Connecticut State University and a BA in theater theater from Augusta State University in Georgia Gary was born in Jacksonville Florida he's the youngest of the family fourth child of a Southern Baptist minister father and a school teacher mother in the short time Gary has been in Omaha started to identify some key priorities for the library which include increasing hours in the branches identifying new strategic partnerships throughout the community and a renewed focus on outreach and programs for kids teens and adults so I will turn it over Gary thank you and first my apologies for being late sorry and then myself won't let that be a warning to you all and when mine went off I saw several of you look at your own thoughts I was just doing my part and actually I went I'm late for somewhat of a good reason I forgot what I wanted to pass out today so I drove back to get it this is more interesting than me well what I what I thought I'd talk about today I have one specific project that I wanted to to share with you that we've completed and to kind of talk to a little bit of that but also wanted to step back from that a little bit and talk more about why we did that how we found ourselves in a situation of doing this and how perhaps you know in the public library we're starting to think of ourselves a little differently in playing a little bit different role in our communities stepping maybe a little bit outside of the traditional box that we that we put ourselves in and following up nicely on a lot of things that Josie alluded to about those partnerships that might not be your first sort of logical thought of where you where you envisioned yourself partnering but really comes down to you know as Josie kept saying from her perspective going to where the people are from our perspective we are where the people are and really seeing ourselves as that increasingly becoming a core role of the public library and I should start out with full disclosure to say that I had nothing to do with any of this because I just got here in January so I will say I and we quite generously but all of the work was done when I got here except for the printing so I can't take too much credit for the specific project although I will but again I think you know this this is one example of many things that we're trying to do and I think many more things that that we've yet even to think of doing as we think about how the Omaha Public Library fits into its community so my predecessor in her thinking and getting is here was to really start to think about the Public Library really is a community center so forgetting you know the books for getting the programs for getting the things we do every day of really thinking you know at its heart the Public Library is you know its community center it's the place where people come for many different things but they come they come to us physically they come to us virtually and they do all kinds of things together all kinds of things individually it's also I think in the same line what that important to think of the library is kind of a neutral territory it's you know again we have kind of the old classics you know the last bastion of true democracy the place where you won't be judged at least not openly where you know whoever you are whatever you come for there there's not there's not a stigma attached and that's I think a really something that we all know and we all sort of recognize but I think it's very important to be very explicit about that with your staff and with the public to think about how incredibly powerful that makes us is that you know where one of the few places that you can come you know for whatever reason you have and it can be a very personal reason that you don't share with anyone it can be something that you broadcast to everyone but whatever it is there's not really anything sort of attached to that and that comes to place in a lot of different things one of the more recent ones that we've been working on in Omaha is working with our literacy center we have a literacy center of the Midlands based there in Omaha that works primarily with adults and they have struggled for many years with with their outreach efforts and with getting basically getting adults to to come to them for help and again sort of the same embarrassment of you know of fraud of being a victim of fraud the same thing with literacy there's a sort of sense of embarrassment a hurdle that you have to get past for that well you know one of the things that we've tried to work with them to recognize is that you know you guys still do all the work we're glad to let that happen but do it in the library because you know if I put myself in their shoes you know if I'm an adult if I'm you know functionally illiterate I don't want to be seen walking into a big sign with a big banner over the door that says this person is illiterate but I will go to the library where nobody knows why I'm there and I can just kind of you know quietly slip into a classroom and go to a literacy class nobody needs to know and the people that are in there in the same boat I am so it makes for a very safe environment so that puts us in a really good position to work with various agencies around the city to help them deliver their services and I guess kind of the last piece of that is really ultimately recognizing that when you start it may seem like a departure from your traditional role in the community but by the time you get to the end of it you realize you're really just doing what you've always been doing and that's just helping connect people with the information they need and again sort of we always kind of I think get a little bit upset with you know our constituents with our community with our elected officials when they focus so much on libraries as books books books and we do so much work to sort of push beyond that but then I think we ourselves sometimes fall into that same trap as well of not realizing how broad our reach is and how broad the role is that we can play so the approach that my predecessor started and one that I am wholehearted continuing is to really step back and look at the city as a whole and what she did was you know basically kind of survey what's going on in the city to listen to what our elected officials are talking about to read the newspapers and just to think you know what are the really critical problems issues needs in Omaha and then to sort of create you know in some ways almost a brainstorm list of problems and then to go through and think now what what role does the library play and making this better and improving this situation one of the tops of the lists that that she came up with was perhaps it's a little known fact I think outside of Omaha I certainly didn't know it but one of our claims to fame is our incredibly high STD rates and it's astronomically high I mean for any city and much much much higher than the places where you'd expect to find this in much much larger urban areas especially traveling in that we are number one in STD rates among young people and especially young women so again a public health issue that has been that the city has been struggling with for years and again a lot of interest a lot of conversation about this happening among various people not the library so conversations between the mayor the council public health organizations hospitals you know the more sort of what you might consider natural logical people to be talking about this so what the library did was think about now know what can we do how can we kind of get at the table and to be perfectly honest we approach these things with a little bit of a selfish attitude and let's you know be frank I mean we want we go into that with wanting to help the greater good but we also want to go into that thinking how is this going to benefit the library and what is going to bring to us really important to be explicit about that because we need to get something out of it I mean we we rely on you know our meager budgets to do incredible things we need to know that there's going to be some kind of a return on investment for being there so what we saw is of course an opportunity to partner with organizations to help them and to help get the word out but also to help people see that we can really put ourselves in any situation and be part of a solution for almost any problem that our community faces because we have just you know you probably couldn't put any any problem on the table that there's a some small role that a library can play if it's nothing more than helping an agency reach its potential audience you know for us again where do we benefit from that well the more that we can really weave ourselves into our communities into our cities into the the population that we serve you know quite frankly the harder it is to get them to unweave us we want to be so completely integrated with our communities that it's it's a no-brainer that you just you know you see well if we were to cut the library's budget it's not just that they couldn't buy more books it's not just that they couldn't buy databases not that they would reduce their hours but there would just be this domino effect around the city of other agencies that it would affect for us that's great it's a win-win situation it puts us in a situation to really show that for every dollar you put into this library you're helping just an inordinate number of agencies departments around the city government private philanthropic so we really approach this as an opportunity to to really find a way to strengthen the library and to position the library for success now getting back to the STD issue you know this was one that the city as I mentioned had been struggling with and really thinking about you know what can we do for this our role really to come to play with this was was partly an educational role partly an informational role of just kind of helping to get the word out and we were sort of looking at you know what are the ways that we can do that again we have the captive audience and we decided we would target young people one of the first sort of pushbacks in and thinking about this idea was well isn't that you know shouldn't the schools be the place if you wanted to reach let's say every you know teen in Omaha wouldn't the schools be a much more logical place to do that since yes many of them the libraries but not all of them and most or all of them you could probably reach through the school system that's partly true and certainly the schools are are doing things and are engaged in this but again this comes back to that kind of neutral territory and you can take the sort of exact same thing do it in the school system and do it in the library and have very different results young people come to us with a slightly different frame of mind so to speak and they tend to be a little bit more receptive to things that they're learning in a library setting than what they're learning in a school setting we're finding that now our sort of newest venture that we're working on a cyberbullying and this is coming up quite tremendously because of course this is an issue that's growing and growing in significance getting a lot more press and we do have an organization based in Omaha that's dealing with cyberbullying they've been working exclusively through the schools and what we found what we talked to them about and we're already finding is that they're just taking the work that they're doing through the schools essentially doing the same thing in the libraries but they're getting such a different response from the young people and attending you know I can sit through and they do I do a lot of this theater they do a little little shows that they create you know a kid will sit through that in their school auditorium with their peers and yeah some will pick up on something some will pick up on another but you do the same thing in kind of that public library setting which is a little more fun a little more relaxed a little more mixed audience and a completely different experience for them and they walk away with very different skills so again it's it's showing and demonstrating that the library can in some ways more effectively but certainly as effectively helped to get these messages out you know with the STDs again it's a topic that has some sensitivity involved in talking about again putting it in as safe a territory as possible was really kind of what we were looking at and something to help kind of get that message out multiply so what we came up with was an idea to to write a grant and raise funds very small grant to produce a comic about STDs that was aimed at young people specifically aimed at young women that you know didn't do a whole lot to to sort of push information out there but just more or less to kind of raise the topic and get them thinking about it to share just a tidbit of information and a little bit about where they could go to get more information so we actually wrote two small grants and produced the comic I'm just gonna pass this around here for you to see this was kind of one piece of a larger thing and I'm sorry since I went back I hope I think I got enough but if I did run out let me know at the end and I'll get more copies to you so what we wanted to do is to produce something very light very simple and in a medium that would appeal to young people so we produced this this very short little comic and we worked with a lot of different agencies to to coordinate this this effort we we use the grant funds to hire a script writer to write the text and an illustrator to design and draw the images then we worked with Douglas County Health Department of course to basically help inform us to talk about the information and need and what we needed to get across but then also on the flip side to help us distribute this and help get this into people's hands we worked with the school systems this was distributed last year and again this year through the school system today I think so far we've we've distributed 30,000 and we're printing additional copies now to grow up this year to the school system so again working with these partners to help get these into people's hands and then of course we have them in the libraries as well as well where kids can pick them up or we have them available you know at our information desk as well as in programming that's that's targeted to teens a sort of another another little tidbit I guess that that puts us in a good situation to help is that we also have in addition to having this really great access to the teens themselves we also have really strong connections to their caregivers to their parents their guardians you know their siblings to their sort of extended network around them and in a way that the schools don't so we can sort of simultaneously reach out directly to the young people but also do the outreach to the parents to the caregivers to the others that are in their lives and sharing their lives with them and that's again a kind of another role that something like this plays even though it's written for one audience we're really making a conscious effort to get into other hands as well so that you're either hearing it from your librarian your mother is bringing this home and putting it in your hands your teachers giving this to you the clinics are giving this to you so that you're almost bombarded with it but the chances are that at some point someone will put this into your hands and you'll get this information it's you know when you kind of think about just this impact and an interesting the question that came up earlier about you know really measuring and how do you measure you know the effectiveness of this you know I have to be quite frank that I I'd say probably we can't and I'm okay with that I kind of made my piece with that it's it's the kind of thing that we can certainly demonstrate that we've gotten it into people's hands but as far as demonstrating did it make a difference obviously we can look at STD rates and certainly hope they go lower but I don't think we could get to a point of pointing that this was the reason we can you know we can assume that it certainly played a small role in it but there are so many efforts going on by so many different agencies it's really hard to tease this out so I think we kind of went into it almost just taking it for granted that it's for the greater good and that it would have some impact and it was a obviously a relatively small investment so we can kind of assume that it that it's doing help some of the other you know little pieces that sort of went along with this we're having a little better luck with managing the metrics and to determine the success of it so you know this was one piece but it was kind of part of a bigger picture and what we've tried to do is develop sort of spin-offs of this that reach other audiences in other ways one of the first things we did also with the grant funding was to produce a public service announcement that aired in April on our NBC affiliate in Omaha and basically the same artist the same kind of a cartoon with the same artist working on it the same basic information with the contact information there so that aired over a month and for that there were some opportunities to measure success on the slightly small scale with that add at the very end of the ad it provided the contact information that you see on the back for the Douglas County help department and what we were able to do was basically to work with them to see if there was any significant increase in the number of phone calls and there was it was great to see and you could sort of measure it is that you know the commercial would play and obviously we had a schedule from the TV station to see when the commercials were airing so that then Douglas County health department could monitor their cause to see if you know there was any correlation and you could see that you know if a commercial aired at 8 o'clock that at 8 0 5 you know there were phone calls coming in so that was really helpful to see that people saw it that was although it was written for kids again for the commercial we tried to aim it a little higher more towards adults who were looking for information possibly for their kids possibly for themselves but again sort of gearing towards the parent caregiver role so that was again nice to sort of see that that came up with some results and then the sort of third piece of this is programming around it and looking at programs that we can do throughout our branches that again help to educate and inform and that's bringing in you know various agencies to talk about various things some of them are aimed towards adults some of them are aimed directly towards the young people we generally don't you know it's it's the tricky part there comes in sort of promoting it and even in coming up with a title because we don't call it you know the STD clinic but you know coming up with just kind of a way of sort of like teen issues that talks about a lot of different things obviously but this is sort of one piece that gets pushed out there and again creating that safe environment where teens can come in and talk and all of this is kind of predisposed on having you know a great teen librarian or teen specialist that has already developed a trusting relationship with the young people that they serve in that community so that first they're comfortable coming and second they're comfortable talking sharing asking questions again a really great opportunity to partnership you know we're not the experts in this so we'll bring in someone who is an expert and who can answer those questions what they bring is the knowledge what we bring is the trust so you know we have our great teen specialist in there that you know the kids have a relationship with they know them they know that whatever they say is going to be confidential because they've built that trust over the last couple of years and there's kind of an immediate buy-in and that opens the door for the content expert to be able to deliver their message in a way that's going to be much better received than it would otherwise we've had a lot of success with that we've been we've been doing those for the last two years we you know we do sort of your typical things that you do to get teens to come to programs we have a small team budget that we use to buy pizza and drinks we do kind of after-school events so they're sort of targeted towards the after-school market coming in we've done some very specialized ones that target homeschool kids who so often get left out of this because they don't sort of fit into the natural flow of after-school activities so it's been again very successful with that again we're able to measure impact in part by attendance in part by trying to capture the stories that come back you know which sometimes are very very small but incredibly powerful and it may just be six months later a team coming in and telling where the librarians you know that class really helped me and maybe saying nothing more are elaborating in a great detail and you have to infer perhaps what the details are but you know at least that somehow you reach that person and really trying to sort of capture that data and collect that information so that we can then in turn kind of demonstrate that this was a good investment and that it is paying off in the communities I think you know beyond that again stepping you know back up a little bit is the sort of process of using this kind of model is an opportunity for looking more broadly at these kinds of issues and again you know this this relates to everything and that's kind of what led me to contacting Josie again but this idea of fraud you know looking at crime you know looking at all the issues that are out there and again just figuring out now where do we fit in you know what's the order we play sometimes it's a big role sometimes it's a little role sometimes quite frankly it's just making sure that organizations know we have meeting room space that they can use for free but it's just kind of inserting ourselves and stepping up being a little bit more aggressive at going out and googling people like you to find out you know who's out there you know who's doing it there's just you know there's an infinite infinite numbers of opportunities for partnerships like this and and to kind of help make these connections the sort of future life of this as I've mentioned earlier we're reprinting this now we're also printing it in Spanish to make it available to again an unlimited number partly for the parents most of our kids that we have a large speaking population in Omaha most of the kids are fine with English but their parents often or not and we want to make sure that again this is approachable to their parents as well so we're producing a number of Spanish language materials that we can distribute through places like the Mexican consulate and through our libraries as well so I'll stop with that very long rambling sentence and open it up to any questions comments things you have yes we do we we produced a what these two sort of pieces to that one is just the sort of static comment which we do have a digital version of it and we have it online now we haven't we're we're doing some modifications of our website which we have to have finished next week so the sort of static version will be linked to from there the commercial I think probably has the potential to have a greater impact online because it's a little more interesting to watch that we have on our YouTube channel right now and again the sort of second iteration of our website which we'll have done shortly it's going to have a direct link out to these these basically to these YouTube video clips of which this this is one line that carries other things right yeah it's it's it is right and it's a shift in focus for us it's something that I bring from your public library which was kind of beaten into us about the importance of stories and has been so successful for them we're just starting to do a beer exactly right I mean it's you know it's the the fact that I can show you a list of statistics and charts and you know that's what we've relied on you know gate counts and circulations and those kinds of things which are still important and we still obviously look at those and more or less just make sure that they're going up but one story means so much more than that and we're really really trying to capture those more and more all of our branches now have a flip camera and what they're doing is you know and obviously in the CD case probably not something you want to film a kid talking about the other instances you know what they're doing is when somebody comes in it says obviously just coming off summer reading this was a big time to do this and somebody comes in and says you know my kid has always hated to read and this year they really got hooked and now they're reading and it's already ahead of his class in school it's just kind of say wait a minute would you mind just saying that you know here on this flip camera and nine times out of ten they're all thrilled to do it and obviously we have a little waiver that they signed that we can use it and we capture that little story because with that one little thing I can do so much more than that the piles and stacks of reports that I have because I can show that a life was changed doesn't matter that 30,000 people came to the library but it does matter that someone's life is different and is doing better in school it belongs to a politician or somebody else absolutely absolutely it's the hearts yeah yeah it's a face right right it's it's real any other questions how many how many libraries? 12 thank you for bringing that out this is a library is great down it and I do answer outreach and we don't always think of those things I mean we do in the general sense but not in a specific sense in terms of I don't think that's such a thing, so I appreciate it. It's good. That's important, and I think it's the kind of thing that sometimes when I talk to my staff about it, it's internally it's somewhat a dull factor, because we always have been, and we've always been willing to do this, but I think we've always, we've been a little bit more passive about it, and we've expected you guys to know about it, and to come to us, and so I think we're just turning the tables a little bit more and saying, no, we have to go out and educate, we have to tell you we have to promote this, we just have to be more active about it, so that you know we're there and can work with you. We're going to do a brief tape change. It's going to take about a minute before we turn it over to Nick. So, just a few more. And the coffee did show up, I don't know. It's delicious. Okay. Also, on the table, our handouts for both of the classes that we offered, for sure, we hope that you can all stay through the whole day, but in case you have to leave at any point, make sure you take the handouts with you, and Marty, I don't think you need to introduce yourself, really. No, Marty can be, I think I know many of you, but just a couple of announcements, if you have already met the restrooms, they're over there in the hallway. Obviously, we have some authority here. I think we'll do introductions perhaps after our panel because we're broadcasting this, and it's broadcast live, so we wanted to start right on time, and make sure we stuck with our schedule. But we do want to get to know you, and we want you to get to know each other, so those will be important parts of our components. The other thing that I'll mention is our class, we do have the option of taking our class in a computer classroom, but there are only 12 workstations, so we would either have to double up, or we can stay in this classroom and project our information on the front. So, we're gonna give you the opportunity to vote on that, so we'll be thinking about that and we'll do that after this panel. Okay, great, thanks. All right, we're going to introduce Nick to you. Nick Butler is here from Missouri this morning. His healthcare career has banned 30 years. He's covered a broad spectrum of experience and expertise in both public and private sectors, in academic, hospital, corporate, and volunteer settings. He started as a nursing assistant in neurosurgery unit at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, where he developed an understanding about the importance of communication and teamwork in direct patient care. After receiving a BA in Fine Arts, Sociology, and Religious Studies at the University of Colorado, designed to explore the world of cultural expression on social values and behaviors, he became involved in large-scale social survey products at the University's Institute of Behavioral Science, where he studied delinquency and violence and analyzing media literacy and media violence. There, he was able to directly interact with severely mentally ill patients to address mental health services and Medicaid reimbursement while employed as a field interviewer for the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health. This also involved data management and database administration, which led to private sector jobs with health insurance companies, Pacific care, and UnitedHealth Care, with efforts on quality improvement and claims analysis. After years in this industry, Nick shifted to the provider side and worked for the University Physicians of MU to oversee aspects of reimbursement and revenue management through analysis of denied claims. All of these experiences have allowed a holistic view of health in our society, especially with being a patient and consumer of health services. With the near completion of an MS and organization management from Regis University, Nick intends to apply all of his life endeavors to the realization of meaningful public health policy through engagement of communities, social institutes, and people. His work with the Missouri Center for Health Policy on Health Literacy and his current affiliation with Health Literacy, Missouri, through the MU Masters of Public Health program represents the culmination of a pathway to see wellness expressed as the true destination of health. So I think Nick's gonna have just a wealth of things to talk about so I will turn it over to you. Well, it's interesting to hear that, all that. I was very, I had to read it all because I was so impressed. I've been, well, I'm a certain age where I've done a lot of things in my life. My career has been, but the point of that is, is that my career has been all over the place, but mostly in health related activities from working with, well, being direct patient care as a nursing assistant to working for big insurance companies, HMOs, and then working for the provider side, helping them get their revenues and all that. So the culmination of all that into what I'm doing right now is, it just seems perfect. And I work for Health Literacy, Missouri. All those names, you might have got kind of lost in all those names, but right now I'm working for Health Literacy, Missouri. And I'll tell you a little bit about that in a bit. And it is through MU though. I'm on a contract with this non-profit, HLM through MU, the Masters of Public Health Program. I think it's interesting that I'm here from Missouri and it kind of brings a regional flavor to a lot of this. And I know that the national libraries of medicine are set up regionally. I just want to say a couple of things about this concept of regional too. I mean, we're all kind of focusing our everyday lives too, but, and I think that we need to stay there, but we need to kind of look up and see this larger regional structures, like even geographically, there's a lot of similarities in a lot of the rural areas between Nebraska and Missouri, I'm sure that some similarities in the urban areas. One important thing is that the health bill that's been passed, and a lot of the money that's appropriated in that health bill is about plain language and communication. I mean, there's real money to be had for our activities from that level. So, and the reason I bring that up is because there's a real emphasis in that health bill on regional activities. So if coalitions, like if states get together or regions across borders, many of the health and human services at the federal level, their regions go across borders. So this is an important point about this regional activity because it can draw dollars down to a regional activities which can then be put out. So keep your eyes open for interpretations of the health bill. I've not read it. I have a lot of people, a lot of analysts that do that for us. So, and hopefully we can find that clear information moving forward. How many people have heard of the term health literacy with a show of hands? Okay, that's a pretty good percentage. I don't know, maybe about half. That's actually a better percentage than when I present health literacy to physicians or other health professionals a lot of the time, seriously. And I attribute that to the fact that many of you are in libraries or communications and you deal with media literacy. And I'm not gonna get into media literacy today. I just wanna fill out this plug that I think it's stewards of media literacy, librarians and others and educators. That is probably one of our biggest barriers that we have right now is people understanding the media messages or the information that they get. And so I have framed health literacy. And we'll talk a little bit more about that since some of you haven't heard that term. But, which is basically the ability to find, use health information for your better health or for well-being. And it's not just the individual, it's institutions, two doctors need to talk less with jargon and so forth. That's all part of health literacy is to get to that communication part. But I see health literacy as a subset now of media literacy. I always kind of thought of it the other way around like you need a little media literacy to do this health literacy. But I really think that when we come out with health messages through whatever channels, we still have that barrier of the corporate media environment, commercials, TV, now social media. So something like this is really a great idea. It kind of cuts through a lot of that. So we need to think of it in those terms too. So I'm really glad that libraries are getting more engaged in health literacy. And I'll tell you a little bit more about our organization and how libraries are involved with that. Ultimately, health literacy is really just a mindfulness activity is the way I see it, which is just if you're a patient and a doctor in a room together, you need to come to an agreement. I mean, everyone understands doctors can use techniques like asking, what will you tell your family when you get home? And that's called teach back. So there's all these techniques in health literacy to kind of get to this point. How many people? OK, given that kind of real brief definition of health literacy, and you can find, if you Google health literacy, you're going to find there's a ton of information. Over the last decade, it's really grown. And right now, it's taken off as evidenced by health literacy in Missouri, which is a new nonprofit. But how many people have experienced some barriers in communication with your health care provider or with your insurance company? Or know somebody that has? I mean, it's a universal thing, right? So right. And so knowing that the state of Missouri threw a private foundation called the Missouri Foundation for Health, which is, I don't know about private foundations, but this was a previous Blue Cross Blue Shield. And they had, like, they covered 84 out of the 115 counties in Missouri. And when they went for profit, the state government required they set up a private foundation that's kind of like a catchment for all the underserved that the Blue Cross Blue Shield used to have. So now there's this foundation. Missouri Foundation for Health, lucky for us in Missouri, is really, I think it's the second largest health foundation funder in the country. It's huge. And they have a lot of assets. I mean, it was a very successful St. Louis-based insurance company. But within that programming group, they did a lot of assessments of the state. And health literacy, that concept of health literacy, emerges a really important topic for them to start funding. So three to four years ago, they funded the Missouri Health Literacy Initiative. And that was an interesting exercise, too. They put together three resource centers that were based in universities. One was the Washington University, St. Louis University collaboration. And they were really good at a lot of public health communications and research. So they were all researchy. Then the AHECs, and many of you know about AHECs, were brought in through Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri. And they brought with them some of the library expertise and helped start developing the resources, health literacy resources, and a website interface for searching. And I'll tell you more about that later, too. This can all be found on healthliteracy.missouri.org. That's in there. Go explore that, and you'll see the resource inventory there. And the third resource center was the University of Missouri in Columbia. And that's primarily how I got involved. I hired onto that job. I had been working at university physicians. So that university has the school of medicine, and it had all the provider pieces. So you see there's, and plus the Center for Health Policy that got the grant at MU was just where I was hired onto. We bridged a lot of organizations throughout the state. So it was really a good collaboration of resource centers, plus the Missouri Foundation folks actually sat in on some of the steering, too. So it was a pretty statewide effort to begin with. So I won't say too much more about that. You can find the history of all that on the website if you're interested. Many activities were launched during that time. There was now three years later, as the plan was to launch this whole thing as a separate nonprofit, break it off. It's still seeded by Missouri Foundation for Health a lot. We have to start finding our own revenue source. Now that's the trick. That's why I keep talking about funding. But many of the products and services that were developed are very interesting. We do simulations with doctors. We have health literacy standardized patients. They call them. Many physicians go through these clinical simulations. It is part of their schooling. Well, we got a health literacy case in there. So it helps the doctors speak more plain language to patients. We do that actually with community doctors, who we've taken it out. So that's in our toolkit. We flip that a little bit. We have a really great community workshop called the Standardized Physician. Or really, that's what we call it internally. It's straight talk with your doctor. And we can get group like diabetes support groups, parents as teachers, any community group that's interested in this, have medical students come in and be the doctor. So that's a role played there. And then we help people in the community understand that. You can ask your doctor, what are you talking about? Or ask for those kinds of feedback. And so it's a very nice workshop. So we have a lot of workshops, products and services, the library stuff. And it's all out there now. Now it's time to move forward. Now that it's all put together. And over the years I had been tasked, in my role, just kind of more like core operations. So I worked a lot with community groups, getting the word out. One of the main aspects of Health Literacy Missouri in the grant years was to fund community organizations for health literacy interventions. There was a huge part of that money was set aside to fund these community-based projects. And I was lucky enough for our area in the mid-Missouri and so forth. I was the contact person. So I got to work with a lot of community groups who were like, oh, money, let's write a grant. So we wrote many grants. And I'll briefly touch on what some of those demos are. The preponderance of them are in St. Louis, of course. I mean, there's a kind of a St. Louis bias to this whole thing. We're trying to say, no, there's also a rural and the rest of the state. And Kansas City is not included because that was not in that Blue Cross and Shield area. They have their own foundation that we have to partner with now, too, to really fill out the state. But anyway, some of the demonstration projects in the urban areas were like working with Urban League, pharmacies, just all sorts of stuff. And again, I urge you to look at the website because I think there's a description of a lot of the demos now. And there's like 31 of them right now. 31 staggered over these three or so. Now my new job at Health Literacy Missouri is community outreach. And I'm still working at MU, but it's a contract with them. But now I have to figure out, OK, now there are all these products and services. There's all this great energy. How do we get it out to the community, to people, how they need it? And there's all these demonstration projects are going. They've got their evaluations going on. How do we, we have to stay in page with them now and take the best practices as we go out into the communities. And just do that. To me, as I talk about, I'm starting to get overwhelmed. Every day, think about all we have to do. Because we don't have a huge staff yet. That's why partnerships are ultimately the way to go here. Many of the demonstration projects are based on the community-based participatory research CBPR model, which is, I feel like, what we have to do to go out when we look for new opportunities to engage the community. But I would like to, some of these are personal opinions now coming out. But I think it's kind of verified out there by funders, too. They're starting to see that a lot of the funding that's coming down to these projects gets to the community organization level. And then, usually through academics, if you notice that Health Literacy in Missouri was initially, it was all universities. And so it had a real academic, and so you get, this is very typical these days, is that academics have a project, a great project. I mean, it might be based on a little bit of research, and it might be based on a real desire to help people. But it goes in, they partner with communities. The funding comes in, the program. You probably are all familiar with this scenario. The funding lasts for two or three years, or maybe there's a little bit of success, and then the funding is gone. The academics go back, write their papers, get promoted. The community is going, where's our program? This, I'm seeing more and more all the time. And now it has created a very serious barrier. When I worked with a couple of the demonstration project partners to, we have an idea, social media in the rural areas. Let's talk about Health Literacy on Facebook. And so we went into this really rural community county, and they already had kind of a coalition going based from MU Extension, the Extension services were in there doing some nutrition stuff. So I thought, this is great. We got ready partners. We can apply for this, and we pitched the idea, and they're like, no, we don't want to do this. Everyone's a standard. Or if you can come in with a smoking cessation program into a community, into an inner city urban neighborhood, they're like, been there, done that. We take all our time, and you're doing this a lot. So I guess I'm going down this path just a little bit to say that true community-based participatory research really has to be more about putting your own ideas aside. I know you have all these great programs, and I have all these great programs. But you really got to sit down with people first in the community, and not even the community organizations kind of get you there. Try to get down even, because that's a layer too, to get down to the grassroots level and just hear what's really on people's minds. That's why I always start off a lot of meetings with, and I didn't ask you guys, but what are your Health Literacy stories? And you just have people start talking about it. And they might not understand really what Health Literacy is. I try not to use that actually. That's more confusing in most cases. So then you start getting the ideas of what people want to do, and then you can see if you can line up your resources and your partners around that. That's the challenge, because it might not match what you had in mind when you went in the first place. So just be open to that. How much time do I have? About five minutes. OK. I'll just give a little anecdote to finish up, then, of going into a community. This was kind of a mix of both really getting to the grassroots, but also coming in with an idea, pre-planned idea. There's a little town in Missouri out in the middle of nowhere called Mylon. It's been there forever. Then a hog processing plant opened up. Do you know Mylon, Theresa? From the days when they had no rental houses. The hog processing plant opened up. The hog processing plant opened up. Now we have now one third of the town is now immigrant Mexican workers. And there's a lot of health problems. There's no resources, nothing. I don't even really know about the library if there's a library there. I don't know that. I don't remember a librarian at the time. Anyway, there's also, how many people have heard of Canyon Ranch Institute? A few people. Well, see, that's a spot in Arizona. But they do this life enhancement program. There's a lot of health literacy in it. But it's also, it's nice. It's a nice spot. You can go there. It's been a week. It's been a lot of money. Well, people started to see that even the very affluent were coming out with a changed perspective on their attitudes about health and their understanding of health issues. So they spun off an institute. And they're trying to replicate this now in underserved populations. It's not always like a weak spa thing. But what they do is, the model is to take providers from a small town like Mylon. And this actually, this is a demonstration march that got funded, not without some arm twisting. Because a lot of people are saying, oh, what if you hear, well, let me, so the idea is to take the providers, send them to Canyon Ranch and Tucson, Arizona, go through this life enhancement program and then bring it back to the community. And so that's what they did. This whole team of providers up at Mylon went there and came back to start replicating that model up in Mylon. The snag was, a lot of people were saying, what if the newspaper's got a whole lot of that one? Missouri Foundation for Health sends doctors to spa. But we worked through all that. Anyway, but that was, I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself because the idea was there for Canyon Ranch to come in and work with Health Literacy in Missouri to find a rural setting to try this. And we tried a few and they just did not bite. It's like outsiders, whoa, you get that a lot. Me, I'm really kind of imposing sometimes too when I get that a lot. And then you say that we're Health Literacy and it's like you lost everybody. But we sat down with representatives from Health Literacy in Missouri and Canyon Ranch and I'm with a lot of people from Mylon. And there was, we had some connections to get all these players around the table. And so we started public health department, the local gymnasium owner, grocery store owner, people like that. It was at that level. We just started talking about the life enhancement program and what it would be like if it came through. Long story short, it's just, you know, that was a good way to approach it. We did that even before we put the first word down on paper for a grant. So I really liked that. That's a great example of how to do it. Universities are struggling now with a lot of federal dollars or their translation programs from clinic to community because they're not engaging the community correctly. So that's, I think that I want that to be really one of the largest takeaways besides all these great partnerships we can build at a regional level is that grassroots work is hard. I don't know how I'm gonna do it. It's not like, it's not like someone could say go out and do community engagement. You have to be there. You have to know people. So this is, it's so important to just leverage all your relationships. Get down. I mean, it might not even be someone that works at the public health department or a community-based organization. It might be that some people think it was that wacky person that's always at the meetings, but gets things going somehow. That, I mean, those are the people we wanna talk to also. So wish me luck as I do this. Anyway, any questions? Well, I'm not sure that everyone does know about the A-Hex and the Raptors Columbus Grand Island. Sorry. And then the Scotts Walk. And then there's Un-Urban A-Hex Shadron, I think. And then the Urban A-Hex is a partnership between Creighton University and the rest of that center. And they're great resources. So if you don't know the A-Hex and your part of the state, they, the Area Health Education Center, they're trying to, they do two things. They try and get kids interested in health careers. Big, probably important job. But then they do health education as well. So they're a really excellent resource. And they're still very involved in Missouri. Not all the A-Hex, but a few of the A-Hex have direct contracts such as I do with Health Literacy Missouri now to continue that health, that health literacy resource. So go to the Health Literacy Missouri website and look, you know, search it, search the database. It's not perfect yet. Everything's pretty new. The A-Hex are definitely very important partners. Yes. And you also have Marty and my information and Terry. When Terry and Marty are teaching, great resources. Just if you can't find anything, you've got our information. I used to be a former A-Hex librarian. So anything you want me to cut down on these handouts? My contact information, I sure hope it is. I've got yours. And then I've got, I'm with the University of Brest in that center now. So I'm one of the librarians up there. In a previous life I served, I trained university positions in Missouri as community members. They hired me because I lived in the community, talking about getting the community relationships. They just found me and said, you will stay in your 5,000 person community and you'll train 1,000 people. And I was like, okay, fine. Any other questions? And Nick, are you staying over lunch? Yes. Okay, so if, because I know one of the things that Health Literacy Missouri, you know, Nick was talking a lot about the regional piece. And so how, having lunch with Nick and talking about what are ways that we can work with Missouri in Nebraska? What are things, because there's all this money? You know, we all, I really like that the community makes participatory research concept. We're sitting around here at the table and we're the people doing the work in this state. What have we identified as things that we want to see happen? And I hope this happens whether you sit with Nick or whether you sit with each other at the table at lunch. What are things we want to see happen? Because we know, we don't need to go do another assessment. We already know what's going on. So how can we all work together? That's another big outcome for this, for this lunchtime piece. And we can take it locally or regionally. So sitting with Nick is taking this idea even bigger than working with Health Policy Missouri, which is a foundation that exists to do this in their state and is looking to move to a regional level. Yeah, I might add that a big part of what Health Policy Missouri is doing, the executive director is and his associate director who hired me when she was still at MU. She works directly for Health Policy Missouri now. They've been working for a couple of years now on a coalition of states too. I think Nebraska was represented at the last one, they're calling it Health Literacy USA. And there's a number of states that have well-developed Health Literacy interventions. Iowa and Wisconsin, you might want to Google those Health Literacy programs too. And if you Google Health Literacy Nebraska, you get, there's some stuff there. There's some organized activity around it. So check it out. Do you talk about funding sources? Sure. Governments, grants.gov is a good one. And then I think you can find you in that source to Health related or whatever you want. We're good. Are you on the blog? You get emails from her every day? I don't think so. Yeah, it's great. She's just advertising. If you're not already on the blog that I keep, a big part of it is funding. And it's based at the community. It's not library. It's community funding. So I keep a blog. You can either just go to the blog itself or you can contact me and I will send one email a day. I probably make about four entries, websites in public health, AIDS information, I mean it's just everything. But funding, I was hearing from people. You want us to do this stuff and we don't have the money to do it. So funding is a big piece of the part of that. I don't know, let's add people all the time. That's great, yeah. It's great. It's not spam. It's not spam. That's what she said, to lead up here. It goes out to the health department. Oh, that's really, really helpful. Okay, that's this. That's this, that I don't need to talk about. No, you don't need to talk about it. These are journal books. So what we want our people here to do is to think about ways you can partner with other people. And we honestly have a great representation here. We have state government, we have a public library, we have academia represented to a degree here, and a hospital librarian. So thank you so much for being our moderator and, and to each of you, we hope that you will work with the National Network Libraries of Medicine. I'm gonna make my first entry right now. Okay, okay. And this one's for Terry, who will be co-presenting with me. Thank you. Thank you very much. So we hope all of us, I can't spread them out. So we're gonna take about a 15 minute break.