The Waiting Room As a Literacy & Learning Environment (WALLE) is a initiative of the NewYork-Presbyterian Ambulatory Care Network. WALLE seeks to address the social determinants of health through a unique two-fold approach: improving health literacy by providing targeted health education, and empowering patients to seek out resource referrals to help their social needs. WALLE serves medically underserved patients who are predominantly from Washington Heights, Inwood, and the Bronx, most of whom are native Spanish speakers. Bilingual volunteers are trained in the tenets of health literacy and cultural competency to approach caregivers in a non-didactic manner.
The goals of the program are to:
-Provide patient-centered approaches that will improve quality of care, patient satisfaction, and health education
-Support clinical staff by providing supplemental social determinant resources to patients
-Maximize provider-patient interaction and time spent in the waiting room by increasing patient engagement
WALLE staff aim to achieve these goals by:
- Connecting patients to free/low cost community resources
- Informing medical providers of patients’ needs as identified by caregivers
- During a medical visit, healthcare providers identify and discuss with caregivers any social need(s) that may be interfering with their patients’ health. They may refer caregivers to the WALLE Help Desk, where they can continue their conversation with a trained volunteer and receive information about available community resources.
