A Study on How Libraries Operate as Health Spaces in the United States

A health space is any physical, social, or virtual space that supports building health literacy skills, promotes health behavior, preventive health, and wellbeing, or provides health care, health information, or health or social services. To move the needle on health, especially preventive health, a focus on non-traditional health spaces is critical. Libraries serve various community needs such as food distribution, health literacy, education, immunization, and health screenings. This study explores the extent to which libraries are equipped to function as a health space. A convergent mixed-methods approach was utilized; 234 library personnel were randomly recruited using data from the 2017 Public Libraries Survey to complete a survey and 24 semi-structured follow-up interviews were conducted. Our findings support that libraries function as a health space in multiple ways including providing important health and social programming and services to patrons. They help meet patron's health information needs by leveraging the expertise of community partners and incorporating valuable input from patrons in programming decisions. However, the capacity of libraries to carry out these health initiatives varies, in particular due to limited staff expertise in health-related topics and structural issues (e.g., funding). Our research emphasizes the need to integrate organizational health literacy attributes into library operations, specifically by (1) streamlining strategic partnerships with community experts in libraries in high-need areas to extend their limited resources, and (2) incorporating health literacy into missions and operations to draw necessary financial and personnel support to overcome salient challenges (i.e., funding and staff training).