What does it look like to operationalize health literacy inside a large academic medical center?

In this episode of Health Literacy IRL, host Megan Freeland, PharmD talks with Katie Leath, MPH, MA, Director of the Center for Health Literacy at UAMS, about how health literacy can move from a side project to an embedded organizational priority. Katie shares how her team supports patient education, plain language, translation, training, and research communication across UAMS and beyond.

In this episode:

• Why health literacy is often misunderstood
• What organizational health literacy looks like in practice
• How UAMS’s center supports internal and external partners
• What institutions need to make health literacy part of how they operate

Connect with Katie and Megan on LinkedIn.

What if the greatest problem isn't that patients don't understand health information — but that we're handing them too much information under too much pressure, with no tools to process it.

In this solo episode of Health Literacy IRL, host Megan Freeland, PharmD explores why healthcare marketing, health communications, health literacy, and patient experience teams need to stop operating in silos — and start building cohesively around the patient journey.

She also elaborates on an uncomfortable and inconvenient truth: that providing more information isn't always the solution. And the system — not the patient — is largely to blame.

In this episode:

• Why siloed teams fall short of patients' needs
• A mouth-watering analogy that reframes information overload
• What patients face during high-stakes medical decision-making
• The largely untapped opportunity for organizations to map health information to the patient journey

Connect with Megan on LinkedIn.

In this episode of Health Literacy IRL, I’m joined by Byron Jasper, MD, MPH, founder and CEO of Byja Clinic in Louisiana, to break down what DPC is, what it isn’t, and why the model naturally creates more space for people to understand and use health information in real life.

We talk about:

• What DPC looks like day-to-day (and why “if you’ve seen one DPC practice, you’ve seen one DPC practice”)
• How time becomes a health literacy intervention (think: hour-long visits, fewer rushed decisions)
• How transparent pricing and fewer “insurance hoops” can help patients become better healthcare consumers
• Why access (texts/calls, same-day help) reduces “bargaining with your health”
• What equitable DPC can look like—including creative approaches like scholarship care and nonprofit support
• Real stories of breakthrough moments for patients

If you’ve been curious about DPC — or spending time thinking about how to improve health outcomes or health literacy through innovation — you'll certainly want to tune in!

Connect with Us

Host – Megan Freeland, PharmD

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/megan-n-freeland/

Guest – Byron Jasper, MD, MPH

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/byron-jasper-03bt04/

Byja Clinic on FB: https://www.facebook.com/byjaclinic/

Byja Clinic on IG: https://www.instagram.com/byjaclinic/