Category: We Heart Health Literacy

Here at We ❤ Health Literacy Headquarters, we always try to use the most inclusive and relatable terms for our target audiences. That means skipping patronizing terms for older adults, stigmatizing lingo for people in prison, and scary words for moms and babies.

But even seemingly neutral terms can exclude some of the people you’re trying to reach. Take “pregnant women” for example. Seems fine, hey? But women aren’t the only people who get pregnant. Transgender men, gender nonbinary people, and others do, too.

This may seem like no big deal, because the majority of pregnant people identify as women. But simple style choices like the singular “they” and the gender-neutral term “pregnant people” can make your materials more welcoming for soon-to-be parents from across the gender spectrum.

So consider swapping terms like “moms-to-be” for more inclusive terms like “people who are pregnant” — or try using “you” for a more conversational tone.

Instead of this:

• Pregnant women should talk to the doctor about how to stay active.
• Expectant mothers need to see their doctor for regular checkups.
• Folic acid is recommended for all moms-to-be.

Try this:

• If you’re pregnant, talk with your doctor about how to stay active.
• Pregnant people need to see their doctor for regular checkups.
• If you’re pregnant or planning to get pregnant, take folic acid every day.

The bottom line: When writing about pregnancy, try making your materials inclusive for parents-to-be of all genders.

Tweet about it: Writing about #pregnancy? @CommunicateHlth has tips to make #HealthLit materials more welcoming for all pregnant people: https://bit.ly/2PuI54Z

Here at We ❤ Health Literacy Headquarters, we know it’s especially important to follow health literacy best practices when communicating with older adults. But before you can address this audience’s health needs, you need to figure out what to call them!

Just like talking down to older adults, slapping fusty old labels on your health materials can really alienate your audience. If a healthy, active 65-year-old sees a brochure about services for “the elderly,” chances are they’ll think it’s not for them.

So remove the confusion and address your materials to a specific age range, using the more personal “you” when it makes sense. And if you need a broader label, stick to “older adults.”

Instead of:

• Elderly people are at higher risk for falls.
• All seniors need the pneumococcal vaccine.
• Geriatric populations may benefit from tai chi to maintain balance.

Try:

• If you’re age 65 or older, you’re at higher risk for falls.
• All adults age 65 and older need the pneumococcal vaccine.
• Tai chi can help you maintain your balance as you get older.

The bottom line: When writing for older adults, skip the oldfangled labels and just specify the age range.

Tweet about it: Working on #HealthLit materials for #OlderAdults? Check out @CommunicateHlth’s tips for how to address this audience first. (Hint: it doesn’t involve “the elderly”): https://bit.ly/2wzUE8H

As health communicators, we’re always thinking about how to tailor content so it really speaks to our audiences. And as digital products and content continue to reign supreme, that means knowing how our audiences “speak” online.

Think pieces about how the internet is destroying our language abound — but internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch says that what’s happening to English “because internet” is anything but destructive. In Because Internet, McCulloch offers an engaging, research-backed explanation of how today’s digital climate is transforming the English language.

So how is this relevant to health communicators? Keeping up with emerging digital trends can help us create engaging and relatable public health campaigns. Just look at this emoji-based sexual health campaign for teens from NYC Health & Hospitals, or the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s quirky meme-based Twitter feed.

But jumping on every linguistic fad isn’t an automatic win for health communicators — check out this Twitter thread where McCulloch and her followers try to decipher a puzzling emoji-based public health message. As always, dear readers, it pays to test your materials with your audience!

The bottom line: Internet language is here to stay — and Because Internet is here to tell you all about it!

Tweet about it: What do health communicators need to know about internet language? The We ❤ #HealthLit Book Club reviews @GretchenAMcC’s “Because Internet”: https://bit.ly/39xYld4

As we look ahead to the next decade of We ❤︎ Health Literacy, we thought we’d give you a behind-the-scenes look at how an idea becomes a post.

As you may have noticed, our more topical topics run the gamut from celebrity nonsense to serious breaking news. And that’s because we draw inspiration from situations our team encounters in everyday life, out and about on the internet, and in the wilds of health communication.

Usually, it happens like this: one of our writers is minding their business, doing their thing, when all of a sudden their brain says, “Hey, this would make a great We ❤︎ Health Literacy post!”

Perhaps they’re inspired by a casual board game with friends.

Or they’re relaxing in front of a flashy Hollywood film when, like a sign from the movie gods, Kate Winslet spouts a public health lesson too good to pass up.

Other posts start when a writer hears some crummy health-related language that really gets under their skin.

And still others have their roots in some long-simmering grammar vendetta that we just have to clear up once and for all.

Armed with this health lit inspiration, our intrepid writer pitches the idea, gets lots (!) of input from the rest of the team, and drafts the post.

Then the We ❤︎ Health Literacy team edits, edits some more, and then copyedits just one more time.

And when the text is done, the real fun begins. Our doodler-in-chief brings the words to life with a droll illustration…

…and when it’s all assembled, it’s publishing time!

But posting the finished product is never the end of the story. That’s where you come in! From the moment we hit send, we’re eagerly anticipating responses from our loyal readers.

Sometimes you write in to share your wholehearted agreement.

And sometimes you’ve got a bone to pick with us.

Whatever your take, your feedback gives us new ideas and helps us craft future posts. (And, you know, confirms that we’re not just shouting into the void.)

The bottom line: Thanks for being a part of We ❤︎ Health Literacy, dear readers — we couldn’t do it without you.

Tweet about it: Ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes of a #HealthLit blog? @CommunicateHlth explains their process: https://bit.ly/38Tps2c

As health communicators, we help people find answers to all kinds of important health questions: When do I need to start getting mammograms? How can I eat healthier? Who needs a flu shot? And readers know these answers are trustworthy because we back them up with the best available evidence.

But what happens when new evidence overturns trusted health recommendations? We’ve all seen the flip-flopping news flashes on the healthiness of red wine and the endless back and forth on the dangers of red meat — but these 180s go way beyond food and drink choices.

For example, experts have recently been questioning the need for those familiar lead aprons during x-rays. In 2016, a review of clinical trials found that a commonly recommended knee surgery was actually useless. And back in 2002, researchers announced the dangers of then-widely-used hormone therapy during menopause… only to reverse course (again!) and re-recommend the therapy for many women.

These turnarounds can call into question the very concept of evidence-based health information. If the evidence is always shifting, one might wonder, how can we ever trust it enough to make good health decisions?

First, dear readers, a philosophical note. One way to look at this ever-shifting evidence landscape is that these reversals show the overall health of the system. Researchers need a healthy dose of skepticism to see the evidence clearly, and reevaluating published studies is part of the job.

And if you hear someone saying that their health advice is so sacrosanct that no evidence could ever disprove it, that means it was never evidence based to begin with!

Now for the practical part. Follow these tips to help your readers feel confident about their health decisions in the face of all these about-faces:

• Stick to (relatively) solid ground. One way to avoid retractions is to avoid publicizing shaky findings in the first place. So focus your materials on recommendations with a broad evidence base and skip flashy recs based on skimpy findings.
• Cite your sources. If you’re writing for consumers, linking to jargon-heavy journal articles isn’t the best way to instill confidence. Instead, cite the organization or agency behind the new recommendation (or non-recommendation), and offer a plain language explanation of the evidence that caused the shift.
• Be up front about what you don’t know. Sometimes we don’t have a definitive answer to a health question — and that’s okay! Just be honest with your readers. For example, rather than leading with what might cause a disease and leaving out the uncertainty, try starting with “experts aren’t sure what causes it.”
• Help your readers spot pseudoscience. New evidence that contradicts old evidence is one thing. A health claim based on no evidence at all is quite another! So do your part to arm people against bogus health baloney.
• Promote shared decision-making for tricky health choices. Even if you follow all these tips, your readers may not trust a recommendation that recently made a U-turn. And it can be hard for even the most media-savvy reader to tell fact from fiction on the internet. So encourage people to talk through thorny situations with their doctors — and use the best available evidence to make a decision together.

The bottom line: Help your readers navigate evolving evidence to make health decisions based on what we know — and what we don’t.

Tweet about it: Dealing with changing #COVID19 info and recs is an ongoing challenge for health communicators. Check out @CommunicateHlth’s #HealthLit tips for writing about health info flip-flops: https://bit.ly/2Gea3x4 #communicateCOVID

Here at We ❤ Health Literacy Headquarters, we try to make all our health information accessible for people with vision loss or blindness. And that doesn’t just mean designing web content to work with screen readers — it means thinking critically about the language these users see online. Oops! There we go using a vision-related word where it doesn’t belong… or does it?

The English language (and the English-language internet) is chock full of these vision-related terms. So this week, we’re teasing out whether links that invite users to “see more posts” are equally inviting for people with vision differences.

Etiquette guides for interacting with people who are blind tend to stress that words like “see” and “look” are fine to use in conversation. But our research didn’t turn up any evidence-based guidance on using these words in web content — so, dear readers, we took to Twitter to find out what real-life users had to say.

And, drumroll please… the folks with vision loss and blindness who responded to our (very unscientific) poll didn’t have strong feelings about vision-related words in links.

Online, people tend to read words like “see” as signposts that show them where to click — not references to physical sight. Using these words in links is an accepted convention of web content, and trying to avoid them is likely to get awkward. (“Perceive more posts” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, hey?)

Of course, language and web best practices are always evolving — and different people with vision loss may have different preferences about this stuff. All the more reason to keep asking questions and, as always, test your materials with your audience!

The bottom line: It’s okay to use vision-related words like “see” in links. And if you’re wondering what language people prefer, just ask!

Tweet about it: Are vision-related links like “see more posts” weird for users with vision loss or blindness? @CommunicateHlth investigates: https://bit.ly/2RANlEL #HealthLit

You may already know that people who are in prison are more likely to have certain health problems, like hepatitis C, HIV, and asthma. Maybe you’ve written about these disparities before — and asked yourself the question behind this week’s post: What’s the best way to refer to people who are in prison?

The obvious choices — like “prisoners” or “convicts” — may seem okay at first. But these words have strong negative connotations and tend to obscure the fact that people who are in prison are … well, people.

Even when the goals of a material are positive, this type of dehumanizing language can have serious negative consequences. It leads to stereotyping and discrimination — which, in turn, can make it harder for people to get jobs or find housing after they’re released from prison. You can probably guess, dear readers, how that affects their health and well-being.

Research has also shown that people who were formerly incarcerated are more likely to have poor mental and physical health. To be clear, we’re not blaming these outcomes on terminology alone — but using stigmatizing language can’t help. So what’s a better option?

Longtime readers know we’re big fans of people-first language here at We ❤ Health Literacy Headquarters. For example, we say “people with diabetes,” not “diabetics.” People-first can also be the right approach when writing about incarceration. It gets the point across without reducing people to one part of their identity.

Keep in mind that some people who are in prison may use words like “prisoner” — and they may prefer that others do, too. Just like so many questions in health communication, the best way to answer this one is to test your materials with your audience!

So the next time you find yourself writing (and testing your writing) about people who are in prison — or even chatting about it in casual conversation — try these alternatives on for size:

• Instead of “prisoners” or “inmates,” say “people who are in prison”
• Rather than “ex-offenders” or “ex-cons,” go with “people who have been released from prison”
• Instead of “convicts” or “felons,” try “people who were convicted of crimes”

The bottom line: Put people first to humanize language about people who are in prison.

Tweet about it: Words like “prisoner” and “convict” come with stigma attached. What’s the alternative? @CommunicateHlth offers #HealthLit tips for writing about people in prison: https://bit.ly/2Ncx0o7

Here at We ❤ Health Literacy Headquarters, we try to keep shame and blame far away from our health materials. For example, we recently banished some scary words for moms and babies. And this week, we’re taking on an even thornier topic: writing about breastfeeding.

Promoting breastfeeding across the board might seem like a no-brainer. It’s natural! It provides lots of health benefits! Those things are true — but like so many parts of parenting, the reality can be more complicated.

Some people want to breastfeed and physically can’t: one study found that more than 1 in 10 new moms had to wean their babies early because of physical problems like low milk supply. Then there’s the lack of paid parental leave, spotty workplace pumping protections, competing caregiving needs for other children and family members… we could go on.

And on top of all the reasons people might be unable to breastfeed, there are also plenty of valid reasons they may not want to breastfeed — extremely unpleasant physical sensations or severe emotional distress, for example! So give new parents a break and skip the stigma around infant feeding options.

Follow these tips to bring nuance and empathy to the breastfeeding conversation:

• Be realistic. The serene young mother feeding her cooperative angel baby in a field of wildflowers on a warm summer’s day? Leave her in a stock photo where she belongs. Acknowledge that breastfeeding — like most bodily functions — can be painful, messy, distressing, and incredibly inconvenient. Women can handle the truth.
• Skip the hysteria. New mothers get bombarded with urgent-sounding advice from all sorts of sources. It can be hard enough to weed through the pseudoscience and sales pitches without added anxiety from stress-inducing health materials. So stay calm and forgo the clickbait warnings about the perils of formula supplementation. You know what won’t help your audience increase their milk production? A panic attack.
• Talk about — and normalize — the range of healthy ways to feed babies. By all means, promote breastfeeding and offer information to help mothers do it successfully. But don’t leave the formula crowd out of the conversation. Remember, breast versus bottle is not a moral dilemma. It’s a health decision that women can make for themselves when they have all the facts.
• Make materials inclusive for all kinds of parents and families. Don’t assume that new parents have the luxury of staying home all day with their babies — offer tips and adaptations for a range of real-world scenarios. Diverse images can help make your materials welcoming to parents of different races and ethnicities. And if you’re writing for a transgender or non-binary audience, try using inclusive terms, like chestfeeding.

The bottom line: When you’re writing about breastfeeding, forget the hard sell — focus on being empathetic, realistic, and inclusive.

Tweet about it: Pump the brakes on the bottle-or-breast stigma-fest. @CommunicateHlth shares tips for writing about breastfeeding: https://bit.ly/2r8VZAW #HealthLit