SWB Library & Knowledge Services (LKS) promoted health information week (HIW) in several ways.

We produced daily displays at both libraries using the themes of each day (images below) that were chosen by the national HIW team which were:

Health Literacy
Mental Health and Wellbeing
Women’s Health
Social Prescribing
Children’s Health
Cost of Living
Shared Decision Making

The team used twitter to promote the themes and the activities of the week. We produced 26 tweets with 14 retweets, 60 likes and 2930 views resulting from those tweets.

The trust held an NHS 75th birthday party at Sandwell Hospital with stands from different departments for staff to attend. We attended the party and set up a stand to promote Health Information Week and the Library, focusing on Health Literacy and Wellbeing. We also set up a stand in the Birmingham Treatment Centre to reach staff based at City.

Over 2 events we spoke to 46 staff, 1 patient and 2 volunteers. Most of the staff interactions were at Sandwell as it was a trust event, attended by many staff. At City we were able to talk to a patient about the reading well scheme and give them information on a book they were particularly interested in. 11 staff members registered for the library at the event with several registering online over the next few days. We sent information https://piftick.org.uk/finding-trusted-health-information/tips-and-guides/ from the Patient Information Forum to a research member of staff to help them inform patients they are recruiting for studies.

The posts and displays were well received and joining in with a trust event proved to be more successful than a stand just from the library so we will try and link in to more trust events in the future.