News

Preston Medical Library Receives Grant to Develop NLM Health and Wellness Toolkit

Preston Medical Library at the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine has partnered with Alcoa Inc.'s local operations, located in Alcoa, Tennessee, to demonstrate how resources available through a medical library can be used in corporate wellness programs. The project will also demonstrate that these resources can reduce the cost of and improve the impact of employee health and wellness programs. The partnership was initiated by an award from the U.S. National Library of Medicine to develop a model and methodology for conducting medical library outreach to an industrial business as a part of that business's overall employee health benefits program. The goal is for NLM member libraries to replicate the model developed by Preston staff to use with businesses throughout the nation.

Preston Library staff, including Ann Gonzalez, Medical Librarian, and Sandy Oelschlegel, Director, are currently working with human resources staff at Alcoa to identify employee health and wellness needs. Preston staff will also have a booth at Alcoa's employee health fair and screening in August with National Library of Medicine consumer health information resources, especially related to Tennessee's top diseases: cancer, Alzheimer's, stroke, diabetes and lung disease.

Through this seven-month project, Oelschlegel said they will create a toolkit of best practices and resources for implementing a partnership such as this in other settings. "Our goal is to be the premier academic medical center library in the southeastern region of the United States," said Oelschlegel. "We are very excited about this project because it has the potential to impact consumer health nationwide."

July 18, 2013