Category: We Heart Health Literacy

In 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made a front page-worthy decision that’s still worth noting today. In response to efforts by HIV activists, CDC decided to officially update its term for sex without a condom — from “unprotected sex” to “condomless sex.” (We love this so much that we almost want to use all caps to tell you how much. But we won’t.)

Why did this decision thrill us here at We ❤ Health Literacy Headquarters, even though the major news outlets in this country don’t think health literacy is front-page news? Because, dear readers, when people say “unprotected sex” in health information, what they’re actually talking about is sex without a condom.

“Unprotected” is a vague — and potentially misleading — term where sex is concerned. Consider these scenarios:

• A woman who’s on the pill has sex with a man, and they don’t use a condom. She may be protected from pregnancy, but she could still get an STD. Did she have protected sex or unprotected sex?
• A man has sex with his monogamous partner who’s HIV-positive. They don’t use a condom, but his partner has an extremely low level of HIV in his blood — and they’re both taking preventive medicines. Would it really be accurate to say that’s unprotected sex?

Interesting questions, right? And maybe even a little loaded since the word “unprotected” can convey a bit of judgment or blame — if you’re doing something “unprotected,” the implication is you’re being careless.

So CDC has sent the vague “unprotected sex” packing, replacing it with exactly what they mean: “condomless sex.” Although we prefer the phrase “sex without a condom,” this change is a huge improvement — and will hopefully be adopted by every sex ed teacher in the land.

This is a prime example of health literacy in action — and why it matters.

The bottom line: “Condomless sex” is more specific than “unprotected sex,” and it takes away the blame.

Tweet about it: This week from @CommunicateHlth: when you’re talking about sex without a condom, follow the CDC’s lead and say “condomless sex” instead of “unprotected sex”! https://bit.ly/2zKTJRF

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “body mapping”? Do you picture an anatomical diagram — or perhaps a full-body tattoo? If so, you’re not too far off, dear readers.

Body mapping is a qualitative research method in which each participant makes a life-size drawing or painting of their own body. After making an outline, they fill in this “body map” with images, symbols, and words. By the end, they’ve created an image that represents multiple aspects of their embodied experience and their unique view of life.

Jane Solomon pioneered body mapping as an art therapy method while working with HIV-positive people in southern Africa. The technique has since grown into a versatile tool for storytelling, teaching, communication, and research that’s used around the world.

How can body mapping inform public health research? You may want to consider this method if you’re planning a community-based project dealing with health indicators or perceived health risks. It’s a good way to gather data about participants’ personal health journeys — as well as the social, political, and economic influences in their lives.

There are many ways to do body mapping, but Solomon’s guidelines list 3 main elements:

• The body map
• A testimonio, or short first-person narrative
• A key for interpreting the images and words on the body map

We see body mapping as a win-win for participants and researchers. The process empowers individuals to share their stories and encourages them to reflect on their health choices or goals. And if you’re a researcher, it can uncover information you never even knew to ask about.

Plus, since the technique focuses on images instead of words, it’s great for overcoming language barriers or accommodating a range of health literacy skills. Count us in!

The bottom line: Body mapping can lead to rich insights and powerful data about participants’ experiences.

Tweet about it: What’s so special about body mapping? @CommunicateHlth discusses how this type of visual storytelling can enhance #HealthLit and research: https://bit.ly/2Rt9lA8

Here at We ❤ Health Literacy Headquarters, we spend a lot of time doing a combination of writing web content and thinking about user needs. As part of this, we always want to make sure we’re not forcing readers to consume more information than they want — but we also don’t want to leave them hungry for more. We want to offer the “just right” amount of information (you know, Goldilocks and porridge and whatnot).

But how do you give many different people a “just right” amount of information? The answer comes from an article by Leslie O’Flahavan called The Bite, the Snack, and the Meal. Sadly, this is not an excuse for midday munchies in the name of health literacy. But it is a great way to think about breaking down content into differently sized “servings” to meet users’ needs.

The article’s author says that, just like guests who come to a dinner party with a variety of appetites, readers are likely interested in different amounts of information on a webpage. The solution? Offer various “serving sizes” of content! Here’s how it works.

• Put the key message in the header. Instead of “HPV Vaccine Guidelines for Parents,” try something like “Get Your Child the HPV Vaccine.” This first nugget of information is the bite. A user who only wants the most important information from a page won’t need to look past the header! Brilliant.
• Put your main message up front. Including a brief summary at the beginning of the page gives readers an introduction to the topic and skips details that some users don’t want. This is perfect for people who want more than a bite but not the whole meal — they want a snack.
• Include detailed content and links to more resources. Some users want the details — all of ’em. Keep these folks in mind when you’re drafting the full webpage. You can even include links to pages with more details or about related topics. And yep, dear readers, this is the meal.

You can also use “bite, snack, meal” to think through content strategy — how related health communication products interact with each other.

For example, let’s say you’re developing an interactive infographic. The infographic, which is relatively easy to digest, is a great snack. You might also create social media posts with key stats from the infographic to serve as bites. And it’s always good to include a link to a webpage that has additional information — that makes the meal.

The bottom line: Keep “bite, snack, meal” in mind to make sure everyone gets what they want out of your health materials — no more, no less.

Tweet about it: It’s tough to predict how hungry folks are for #HealthLit info! @CommunicateHlth dishes on a strategy for satisfying every appetite: https://bit.ly/2OAeeVE

Here at We ❤ Health Literacy Headquarters, we really ❤ research. This surely comes as no surprise to you, dear readers — we’ve written about loads of research-related topics (where to test! how to test for less! omg there are so many testing techniques!). Today we’re talking about communicating research results.

Picture this: you’re a researcher with a sweet tooth and a grand plan. You want to know which ice cream flavors are most popular among, say, cattle ranchers in Montana. So you get some Montanan ranchers together in a room, buy a bunch of different kinds of ice cream, and ask them which flavors they like best.

Now it’s time to ethically and accurately write up your research findings. To do this, be sure to report on participants’ actions and behaviors, not their POBAs (perceptions, opinions, beliefs, or attitudes). Why skip POBAs? Well, because you have no way of knowing what participants think or feel. You only know what they tell you and what they do. (Granted, there probably aren’t a lot of ranchers in this scenario concealing secret ice cream-related thoughts, but it’s the principle of the thing.)

To make sure that the only thing you’re putting in your participants’ mouths is ice cream, choose verbs that show communication — like said, noted, expressed, suggested, or indicated. Steer clear of POBA verbs like thought, felt, or believed. Let’s look at a few examples.

Instead of:

• Many participants thought the lobster ice cream was gross.
• Most participants felt that black raspberry chocolate chip was the best kind.

Try:

• Many participants said they didn’t like the lobster ice cream.
• Most participants expressed a preference for black raspberry chocolate chip.

Just look at those completely objective, factual observations!

And here’s a final pro tip: command-F is your friend. Before you share your findings, double check your document for POBA verbs. The good news is, if you find a POBA word, it’s super easy to swap in something more accurate.

The bottom line: When reporting your research findings, focus on participants’ words and actions (which you can know), not their feelings or beliefs (which you can’t).

Tweet about it: Tips for communicating research findings from @CommunicateHlth: https://bit.ly/2O6PJ2e #HealthLit

You’ve finally launched your website. As an all-star health communicator, you’ve done everything you can to make it great. You tested with users. You tailored the content to your audience. You made sure the site is accessible. And of course you wrote it all in plain language.

Your work is done, right? Not so fast, dear readers! Now you need a way to keep that beautiful content as up to date as the day it launched, which will help your users stay happy and engaged. You need… wait for it… a content maintenance plan!

A content maintenance plan answers questions like:

• How and when do we update content?
• Whose job is it to update content — and who’s responsible for approving changes?
• How do we know when it’s time to remove old content?
• When we add new content, how do we decide where it goes?

Important stuff, right? Now that you know what it is, check out our top 3 tips for creating a stellar content maintenance plan.

1. Get really specific about adding and removing content. No matter how thoughtfully you’ve planned your site, you’ll probably realize soon that you need to add new pages. And there will be other pages that are no longer needed. It’s hard to make good decisions about this on the fly, so set criteria for when and how you’ll add or remove content.

Be sure to plan for where new content will go. You’ll also need to figure out what removing old content entails — do you need to archive it somehow? Can you just delete it? Decide how this will work in advance.

2. Get the right people on board. Having a plan isn’t enough — you need to know who’s going to do the plan. Figure out who will handle content maintenance tasks, like fixing broken links, and make these tasks a priority. You don’t want them to fall to the bottom of the to-do list every time.

You also need to decide who will review content when you’re making updates and who needs to approve new content. Put it all in the plan! Nailing down roles and responsibilities now will save you headaches later.

3. Make a maintenance schedule — and stick to it. A maintenance schedule tells you when to check your content for accuracy and make updates. This is also a good time to catch broken links and other out-of-date information.

We recommend reviewing each page at least once a year, but you could decide to review every 6 months or every 2 years, depending on the type of content and your goals for the site. We’re big fans of scheduling the review of large sites that have many pages throughout the year — and, you guessed it, putting all the details in the plan.

The bottom line: Make a plan for keeping your site’s content up to date — it’ll make your life easier and your users will thank you.

Tweet about it: Making a plan to keep your #HealthLit site up to date is a win for you and your users, says @CommunicateHlth: https://bit.ly/2Ahiy8o

It’s been a big year for YouTube, dear readers.

The Pew Research Center recently found that everyone’s favorite video-sharing site is dominating the social media landscape. You probably know YouTube for things like its powerful search function and its infamous influencers. But today we’re highlighting some of its lesser known — and super important — features: tools for making content accessible.

YouTube’s most prominent accessibility feature is closed captioning, which gives viewers the option to read video transcripts instead of listening to the video. This helps make your content accessible to people who are hard of hearing, folks who are watching in a loud environment, or users who can’t turn on the sound.

But there’s more. So much more! Check out all these things you can do to make content accessible on YouTube.

• Use built-in speech recognition to auto-generate captions. This is an option in English and some other languages. We recommend checking these captions though, just to make sure nothing got lost in the process.
• Upload a transcript. You can auto-sync the text to line up with the narration or dialogue in the video. Neat, right?
• Add subtitles. Pro tip: If you don’t speak the language your subtitles are in, enable “community contributions” so viewers can do the work for you. Teamwork makes the dream work!
• Download an auto-generated transcript and use it in on other social media platforms (like Facebook) where you want to share your video.

The bottom line: Turn to YouTube to make your video content more accessible.

Tweet about it: Accessibility’s a breeze on @YouTube! @CommunicateHlth explains: https://bit.ly/2EdtR5n #HealthLit #a11y

A few weeks ago, we ventured out of the We ❤ Health Literacy Headquarters to attend one of our favorite conferences: the National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing, and Media (NCHCMM). And it was great! So for this week’s post, we’re sharing our top 3 takeaways from this meeting of the health communication minds.

1. Make sure your message is relevant to your audience. Okay, dear readers, you’ve heard this one from us before. Dr. Jerome Adams, the U.S. Surgeon General, explained it like this: suppose your goal is to promote flu shots in your community, and your audience du jour is local business owners. Instead of only creating messages about how well the flu shot works, be super specific about how it benefits this particular audience. Fewer people with the flu = fewer employee sick days. Win win!

2. We’ve come a long way, baby! It’s easy to forget that health communication — and health literacy — are relatively new concepts. People have always communicated about health, but it wasn’t until the 1980s and 90s that health communication became its own field. (To put things in perspective, Ice Ice Baby existed before CDC had an Office of Communication.) Today, health communication is a well-established field with advanced degree programs, specialized peer-reviewed journals, and even our very own professional organization.

3. The best is yet to come. This year’s NCHCMM theme was “Insights into Impact,” which highlighted new tools that can help us become better health communicators. We heard about chat bots and machine learning for digital ad campaigns — and we even had the chance to show off our very favorite interactive infographic. None of these health communication tools were possible a couple decades ago. But now we’re able to segment audiences more precisely, reach people with more targeted messaging, and access better data to measure our impact.

Interested in what others thought of the conference? Search #NCHCMM on Twitter to see some highlights!

The bottom line: The field of health communication has come a long way, and we’re excited to move forward with it.

Tweet about it: Check out @CommunicateHlth’s #HealthLit takeaways from the National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing, & Media: https://bit.ly/2R4gZkr #NCHCMM

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you share our ❤ for health literacy. So this week, we wanted to tell you about an upcoming event we think you’ll also ❤: the Health Literacy in Action Conference (HLiA) happening on October 26 in College Park, MD.

The HLiA conference will bring together some of the most dedicated health literacy fans in the field (the Horowitz Center for Health Literacy! the Institute for Healthcare Advancement! yours truly!) for a deep dive into the principles and best practices of health literacy. We’ll be sharing the stage with health professionals and advocates from diverse organizations, all united by a passion for improving health literacy.

At HLiA, you’ll:

• Learn practical tips for improving your health materials
• Hear about the daily impact of health literacy
• Connect with other health literacy enthusiasts

Visit HLiA’s website to learn more. Space is limited, so be sure to register early.

Anyway, join us! We can hardly wait to talk with you about our very favorite subject.

The bottom line: We hope to see you next month at HLiA for an exploration of innovative approaches to improving health literacy!

Tweet about it: Do you love #HealthLiteracy? Let’s talk about it at #HLiA18 on 10/26 in College Park, MD. Get all the #HealthLit details: http://hlactionconf.com

(First, apologies for that title. We couldn’t help ourselves.)

Here’s a true thing, dear readers: government websites often get a bad rap. This makes sense, since people often visit them to do or find something very specific and un-fun — like signing up for insurance or downloading a tax form. In these moments, the stakes are high and there’s a good chance that users are already frustrated. Too much jargon and annoying usability issues only make things worse.

That’s why we wanted to share our top 3 tips for creating user-friendly government websites — and showcase some sites we ❤.

1. Make it easy for people to do the thing. Most people don’t visit government websites for kicks. They need to get something done or find something out. So don’t make them read through a massive history of your agency or wade through a sea of reports to get to the content they need.

Case in point: HealthCare.gov. Shopping for health insurance can be super overwhelming and it sure isn’t most people’s idea of a good time. HealthCare.gov’s homepage features big buttons with some of the most common action steps, like signing up for a plan. One click and you’re on your way.

2. Don’t assume your users are insiders. If you work for the government, you probably know the name of every department and program in your agency. But guess what? (That’s right, you guessed it.)

We ❤ how Vets.gov uses everyday words in the site navigation to guide people through the benefits available to Veterans and their families. The site doesn’t assume that people already know the ins and outs of the VA health care system or the names of all the VA programs. It just invites people to explore and apply for benefits. Zero insider knowledge necessary.

3. Don’t be afraid to be human. It’s okay to show a little personality or emotion — really! It might even be the key to engaging with users.

The folks behind Smokefree.gov aren’t afraid to tap into the emotions of their users. In fact, that’s a big part of how they help people quit smoking. They tell visitors that quitting is a journey. They encourage people to be proud on their Quit Day and reassure them that a slip-up doesn’t mean they’re failing. A little empathy can go a long way.

The bottom line: Government websites really can be clear, easy to use, and even fun!

Tweet about it: 3 tips for making government websites that are clear and easy to use from @CommunicateHlth: https://bit.ly/2NExGnD #HealthLit