Category: We Heart Health Literacy

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

As you may have noticed, we’re all about accessibility here at We ❤ Health Literacy Headquarters. But that’s not only because designing for people with disabilities is the right thing to do — it can also make health materials better for everyone. Win-win!

We’ve shared general web accessibility tips before. But one area that often gets overlooked when it comes to accessibility is designing for people with learning differences like dyslexia.

Up to 1 in 5 people worldwide have dyslexia, which causes problems with reading. That’s a lot of people who could potentially miss out on your content!

Try these tips to make your website more accessible for people with dyslexia:

• Watch your fonts. Large sans serif fonts like Arial, Century Gothic, and Tahoma work best. Or try OpenDyslexic, a font designed specifically for people with dyslexia. (Some people with dyslexia find a much-maligned little font called Comic Sans easy to read — but let’s not go there.)
• Consider color contrast. We’re all for high contrast as a general rule, but black text on a white background can be difficult to read for people with dyslexia. Dark gray text on an off-white or light gray background is a solid compromise.
• Let users customize your site. Provide a few options so users can select the font, text size, text color, and background color that work best for them.
• Say it with visuals. Reinforce written content with icons, photos, and videos. That’s a good idea anyway, but it can really help people with dyslexia work around troublesome text.
• Make search easier. Incorporate suggested search terms so users don’t have to remember or spell a specific term perfectly to find what they’re looking for.
• Keep it short and sweet. Nobody will thank you for huge walls of tiny text — least of all users with dyslexia. So stick to 55-ish characters per line and aim for short sentences.

The bottom line: A few simple design changes can make your website more accessible for users with dyslexia.

Tweet about it: Want to make your website accessible for users with dyslexia? Try these tips from @CommunicateHlth: https://bit.ly/2pDZkap

Here at We ❤ Health Literacy Headquarters, we believe that everyone deserves health information that’s easy to understand. And everyone means everyone — including kids. But how do you communicate complicated health information to young audiences?

Depending on the child’s age, a good old-fashioned chat may work better than written materials. So today, we’re sharing tips for talking to kids about health. And just like when talking to older adults, the best approach is to be clear, not patronizing.

When you talk to kids about their health — or a family member’s — follow these tips to help them understand:

• Use developmentally appropriate terms — not baby talk. There’s a happy medium between “Pop Pop got a booboo in his brainsy wainsy” and “Young sir, your grandfather has suffered a ruptured cerebral aneurysm.” We bet you can find it!
• Tell the truth. When children ask hard questions, you might be tempted to feed them soft answers. But don’t let protective urges lead to outright lies. If someone in the family has an incurable illness, telling a child that the doctor will make it all better will only make them feel betrayed in the long run.
• Set clear expectations. Unknowns are scary! So if you have to say something alarming like “you’ll be in a cast for the next 6 weeks,” follow it up with something reassuring like “you can still annoy your brother with your other arm.“
• Keep the conversation going. No one likes a long-winded medical lecture, and kids absorb information better in lots of little doses. So make sure they know who to ask if they have more questions — or if they just need someone to talk to about all the info you’ve shared.

The bottom line: Be clear and honest when communicating with kids about health issues.

Tweet about it: Honesty is the best policy when communicating with kids about health issues. @CommunicateHlth shares tips to communicate with younger audiences: https://bit.ly/351z9td #HealthLit

In general, people tend to associate health care with curing diseases. You get sick, the doctor makes you all better! Bada bing, bada boom.

But what happens when there’s no cure in sight? Or when there’s a cure, but it causes nasty side effects? Or when you want your doctor to focus on how you’re feeling and not just how fast your cancer is growing? That, dear readers, is where palliative care comes in.

Palliative care treats symptoms, rather than aiming to cure a disease. It eases pain, helps people function with chronic conditions, and puts patient preferences at the center of health care decisions. It recognizes that quality of life is just as important — or even more important — than keeping people alive at all costs.

Sounds nice, right? But palliative care often gets a bad rap — or no rap at all! Most people have never even heard of it. So as health communicators, we have an opportunity to debunk the misinformation and spread the word about this important type of health care.

Try these tips when writing about palliative care:

• Introduce the term — and define it in plain language. First things first: if you’re writing about palliative care, make sure your readers understand it from the get-go. Start with something like, “Palliative care focuses on helping people with very serious illnesses feel better — with the goal of improving their quality of life.” Then you can get into examples (like pain management) to drive it home.
• Skip the doom and gloom. While palliative care is often part of end-of-life or hospice care, it’s not the same thing. Focusing on easing symptoms does not equal throwing in the towel, and plenty of people get palliative care and go on to live long, healthy lives.
• Stress that it’s not either/or. Doctors often provide palliative care alongside aggressive treatments — like treating nausea caused by chemotherapy. So don’t set up a choice between curing the disease and finding relief from symptoms and side effects.
• Promote shared decision-making. A doctor following clinical practice guidelines in a vacuum may default to aggressive treatments in search of a cure. But palliative care requires real conversations between doctors and patients — so take this chance to sneak in some education around shared decision-making.
• Empower patients to choose. Palliative versus curative care isn’t always an either/or choice — but sometimes it is. And that’s okay. When faced with painful treatments that may only buy a bit more time, people have every right to say no to a potential cure. Choosing to focus on quality of life over quantity of life is a valid choice — so make sure to frame it accordingly.

Bottom line: Palliative care promotes quality of life — so help promote palliative care with quality health communication.

Tweet about it: Think palliative care is all doom and gloom? Think again! @CommunicateHlth has tips for writing about palliative care: https://bit.ly/2NcHYci #HealthLit