Her Story
About Jessica
Jessica Daly serves as the health literacy coordinator at AdventHealth University in Orlando, Florida. She has been in higher education at the university for four and a half years, following eight and a half total years across multiple institutions. Prior to higher education, she spent 17 years as an elementary-middle school teacher and school librarian. Her path included serving as a research librarian and later coordinator of research and instruction at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, for three and a half years. After moving to Florida in 2016, she worked briefly at Florida Technical Institute in Orlando before joining Orlando Health as a consumer health librarian in a hospital system. At AdventHealth University, her librarian role evolved into a full-time health literacy coordinator position approximately two years ago. In this capacity, she works with future clinicians to develop communication skills using plain language and teaches patients how to research health information effectively. She also collaborates with the broader AdventHealth healthcare system to integrate health literacy training for staff and clinicians, emphasizing patient engagement, education, and empowerment.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Jessica
01What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Challenges is that this is not health literacy is not a common thing within Western healthcare. It is something that is on the brink that more people are talking about it. Our system is definitely talking about investing and moving forward with it which is awesome but we haven't put that in place. The other challenge with it is trying to convince healthcare leaders that this actually does make a difference financially. But where it helps is it actually saves money because it keeps patients from being readmitted within 30 days where hospitals are penalized and it also helps even with things like malpractice. The systems who actually have placed health literacy as a part of their strategic goals have seen tremendous results. Patient satisfaction scores risen readmissions are reduced medical errors are reduced medication errors are reduced.
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