Neighborhood Public Library Health Program

Maybe the title should be National Health Education Initiative spearheaded by a Public Library. 14 years ago, the East Brunswick Public Library (EBPL) planted a seed to provide health information to members of its community. Today, this is an award-winning national program with support from major organizations.

When EBPL Information Services Manager Karen Parry, with acquiescence from Library Director MaryEllen Firestone, proposed initiating a program to provide health information to residents of East Brunswick, New Jersey there was skepticism that residents would utilize the library when the Internet was spewing out almost anything they wanted to know. However, Karen was optimistic and with some initial funding from the EBPL and later from the East Brunswick Public Library Foundation and a grant from the Lawrence Schacht Foundation, Milton Heumann Trustee, and then the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, she never looked back. Today, over 150 public libraries are direct beneficiaries of the materials developed in East Brunswick.

The Library’s Just for the Health of It program has shown that there is an intersection between public libraries and public health in building healthy communities. This health literacy initiative targets people of low income, immigrants, and seniors who are most at risk for poor health outcomes. Just for the Health of It was an organic outgrowth from a 2009 recognized discernible change in community demographics. Library staff observed a new wave of library customers from different countries as well as an influx of seniors from newly built senior housing developments. A trend soon emerged that both cohorts were coming to the library with health questions.

In 2012 word about Just for the Health of It was spreading and EBPL’s Information Services Manager was invited to be a community representative on the Healthier Middlesex advisory board of Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and Saint Peter’s University Hospital. The purpose was to design a Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) as required by the Affordable Care Act for all non-profit hospitals and identify the overarching health needs of Middlesex County. Since then, the library has played an active role with Heathier Middlesex in designing multiple CHIP plans which findings are used as the foundation of its health initiative for planning new strategies, selecting programs, community outreach, and adding content to the health portal. The most recent health priorities of the 2023 CHIP that are focused on are Mental Health, Access to Care, Racial Injustice and Discrimination, Food Insecurity, Financial Insecurity, Chronic Disease, Housing Instability, Technology Use and Access, Substance Abuse and Violence.

Also, in 2012, a six-year grant partnership was started where the librarians would venture each week to Robert Wood Johnson’s Wellness Center in New Brunswick and Old Bridge, NJ. The librarians would set up their table and provide culturally and linguistically appropriate health and wellness information. Healthier Middlesex was honored with the 2017 HRET Community Outreach Award by the New Jersey Hospital Association using EBPL’s program. In 2018, Healthier Middlesex was awarded a two-year grant by New Jersey Health Initiatives of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The grant was called the Health Information Library on Wheels (HILOW). The HILOW expanded EBPL’s mobile Just for the Health of It program into some of the most distressed towns in Middlesex County to educate vulnerable people about good health.

Just for the Health of It positions EBPL as an upstream community partner alongside healthcare professionals in working to improve community health.

The program uses a 4-tiered approach to building a healthy community:

The library has a Consumer Health Team made up of dedicated librarians and health associates who are the ultimate ambassadors of community health. The team is multicultural and multilingual and all have Consumer Health Information Specialization (CHIS) certification through the Medical Library Association. It is a mobile team that ventures out into the community weekly where they set up tables focusing on different health topics relevant to the CHIP. Librarians also create welcoming tables at school fairs, senior centers, East Brunswick Day Festival, farmers markets, community pools and municipal ponds, and library lobbies and events where they hand out articles about health topics and fun giveaways and are there to respond to questions.

Today EBPL’s Just for the Health of It program is made up of over 65 healthcare partners and major organizations who support the program. Major partners are Healthier Middlesex Consortium, Middlesex County Department of Health, Astera Cancer Care, Advisory Health Council of East Brunswick, New Jersey State Library and Rutgers Graduate School of Social Work. This rich partnership has allowed the library to offer in-person and Zoom programs on a host of health and wellness topics. The programs have been viewed worldwide.

The library is a designated place for medical students to gain experience for their residencies by running multi-year, longitudinal studies through our “Get Pumped Up About Heart Health,” “Wellness Around the World,” and “How to Be a Good Friend” series. All of the Library’s virtual programs are posted on YouTube.

EBPL partnered with the New Jersey State Library in 2021 and spearheaded NJHealthConnect@Your Library. This program, supported by federal ARPA funds, addressed the health barrier of “Access to Care” in some of New Jersey’s most distressed communities. The purpose was to connect at-risk people to healthcare via telehealth. EBPL purchased and distributed 454 iPads to 151 libraries throughout New Jersey. The iPads are curated by EBPL’s consumer health team and are preloaded with telehealth apps for all major hospital systems in New Jersey. The iPads also have multilingual health information, mental health resources, apps for doctor conferences, crisis hotlines, links to the Affordable Care Act and NJFamilyCare, and the latest Covid updates in English and Spanish. EBPL administered the program, and its staff traveled throughout New Jersey to train participating NJHealthConnect libraries so they could teach their own library patrons.

Just for the Health of It taps its network of healthcare partners and hospitals to provide lifesaving health screenings twice a month. Many of its screenings are attended by people without health insurance. EBPL has provided at-risk individuals with screenings for Hearing, Balance, Memory, Blood Pressure, Blood Sugar, Cholesterol, Bone Density, Hearing, Foot, and Stroke Risk Assessment. On October 9th, EBPL was the first library to be visited by the ScreenNJ bus of the Rutgers New Jersey Cancer Institute to provide free breast exams, skin cancer screening, and lung cancer screening for people in Middlesex County without health insurance.

The library designed and maintains a proprietary community health portal and is constantly expanding into new areas and is updated almost daily with new content. In the first six months of 2023, the portal received 24,000 searches with rapidly growing use.

The library receives ongoing support from many non-profit organizations through grant funding or the donated time of their staff and services. These include Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, Healthier Middlesex, New Jersey Health Initiatives of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Network of the National Library of Medicine, New Jersey Department of Labor, New Jersey State Library, Rutgers University, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and The Arts Institute of Middlesex County.

Just for the Health of It has been featured in many professional library and medical publications and websites and is the recipient of many awards. This program is rapidly expanding nationwide, with many out of NJ libraries participating with EBPL.

Public Libraries and, in particular, EBPL are doing amazing things and are not just for books. To learn more about Just for the Health of It, go to the websites mentioned above. Also, go to your local public library and see what they are doing. They are doing good!