Congratulations Corner

Congratulations to Keren Greenberg and her colleagues from the Pollin Center on the publication of the article   “Cardiovascular health literacy and patient–physician communication intervention in women from disadvantaged communities”  Keren and her team: Elisheva Leiter , Milka Donchin, Nisreen Agbaria , Mayada Karjawally and Donna R. Zwas, were honored that this article was published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, the official journal of the European Association of Preventive Cardiology.

The impact factor of an academic journal is a scientometric index that reflects the yearly average number of citations that recent articles published in a given journal received. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field.  Currently in the field of cardiology and cardiovascular medicine -only 5 journals (of the 357 listed) have an impact factor higher than this journal!

Health literacy (HL) is an individual’s motivation and ability to gain access to, understand, and use information in ways which promote and maintain good health. By improving health literacy, we increase the likelihood that people will get the information and the guidance they need to improve their general and cardiovascular health. We had a very interesting finding: participants who started out with low confidence increased their self-confidence, but those who started with high confidence reported afterward that their self-confidence was lower, reflecting increased insight and a more realistic self-evaluation.  Evaluation demonstrated that the program led to significant behavior change among the participants and increased satisfaction with the doctor-patient interaction.  We are now working on a new health literacy initiative in the Arab sector, one that will be tailored to the community’s specific needs.