Category: We Heart Health Literacy

Today we’re going to tell you about something we really ❤: Plugins (also known as plug-ins, add-ons, or extensions). To be clear, we’re not talking about air fresheners, but rather tiny tools that enhance your web browser. Plugins can help you create better websites for your users — and you know we really, really ❤ that.

So if you haven’t yet explored the wonderful world of plugins (or even if you have), we’re here with some basics. We’ve listed some all-too-familiar scenarios below and linked them to a plugin that can solve that problem. Handy, eh?

Design inspiration

• I love the font that website uses — what is it?
• I want the color in so-and-so’s logo on my site. What color is it exactly?

Accessibility help

• I wonder if the color contrast is strong enough for people with vision impairments.
• Will my website work well for someone who’s using a screen reader?
• My site looks great on a desktop, but how does it look on a laptop or phone?
• Did I miss any other common accessibility improvements?

Common frustrations

• Oh shoot, I closed that tab by accident. How do I get it back?
• I wish I could scribble notes right on this website to share with my team.
• Are any of the links on my page broken?

Isn’t this fun? And these are just a few plugins for a few browsers. Spend some time checking out the plugin store of your favorite browser (like Chrome, Firefox, or Safari) and start making your life easier today.

P.S. If you want to know more about accessibility, check out our post about making health information accessible.

The bottom line: Use browser plugins to create better, more usable websites.

With the 24-hour news cycle, digital media’s omnipresence, and newspapers and magazines galore, we face a constant stream of information. If you’re anything like us, dear readers, sometimes all this stimulation just makes you want to take a nap.

In this vast media universe, it can be tough to pick out the important bits — particularly when it comes to messages about our health. But at the end of the day, what we all really want to know is: What’s in it for me (WIIFM)?

Anticipating and answering this question in your health content can help your messages stand out from the pack. People might pay closer attention if they immediately see opportunities to:

• Save money or time
• Lose weight
• Improve their health or the health of their loved ones
• Feel better or be happier

Think about this message:

“You can make small healthy decisions each day — like choosing to take the stairs instead of the elevator.”

That message provides a helpful tip, but doesn’t explain the benefit of acting on it. Now, consider this alternative:

“You can make small decisions each day that will help you lose weight. For example, take the stairs instead of the elevator. If you walk 100 stairs every day, you’ll burn 100 extra calories in a week.”

This message helps explain WIIFM — and it might just cut through all that noise.

The bottom line: Grab people’s attention and get them to act by answering the question “What’s in it for me?”

All relationships have their tough moments. (Well, except for ours, dear readers — of course.) Your mom nags you about that overdue haircut, your roommate leaves his dishes in the sink for 3 days, your friend never pays you back that $20.

But even though our friends and family can drive us a little crazy, they can also have a positive impact on our physical and mental health. That’s because the people in our lives can offer a major benefit: Social support.

There are a few different kinds of social support:

• Emotional — like when someone shows empathy, concern, or affection
• Instrumental — like when someone gives you a ride or cooks you a meal
• Informational — like when someone offers advice or guidance
• Companionship — like when someone spends time with you or shares your interests

So, how exactly does social support relate to health? You get a kiss on the cheek and your headache goes away? Well, not quite. Thankfully, there are models that help explain how social support works.

• The stress-buffering model says that social support can help people cope with a stressful situation by protecting (or buffering) them from the bad health effects linked to stress. According to this model, social support is most helpful during stressful times.
• The direct effects model says that social support has a positive effect on health overall. For example, the social support people get through ordinary interactions enables them to keep their emotions in check, thereby improving their mental health.

As health communicators, we aren’t directly involved in conversations between our readers and their loved ones. (That would be creepy.) But we can still promote social support. For example, we can:

• Give tips on how to help a family member or friend through an illness
• Remind patients to reach out to friends and family members for support
• Let patients know how to access relevant support networks
• Draft talking points to help health care providers talk about sensitive topics

The bottom line: Social support can have a positive impact on health, so be sure to promote it in your health content.

It’s hard to make health messages easy to understand. (Can we get an amen, dear readers?) But can you guess what’s even more difficult? Getting people to remember and act on our messages. In this edition of the We ❤ Health Literacy Book Club, we introduce a book with a method that can transform the way you communicate ideas: Chip Heath and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick.

You can find sticky ideas in all sorts of places — from stellar advertising campaigns to urban legends to great speeches. And, according to the Heath brothers, the reason these ideas stick with you is no great mystery.

There are 6 distinct traits (or principles, as the Heath brothers call them) of sticky ideas — and it’s pretty easy to put them to work. For example, resist the urge to say all-the-things. Instead, prioritize and find the core idea. (Sound familiar?) That’s the Simple principle.

Here’s another one: Humans are hard-wired to expect patterns. So when you break a pattern, you get people’s attention. This means that in order to keep your audience’s interest, you have to make them want to know more by creating “curiosity gaps.” That’s the Unexpected principle.

Made to Stick is a breeze to read, but — true to its name — it sticks with you. The Heath brothers share stories that illustrate what sticky successes (and non-sticky failures) look like. They walk you through before and after examples to demonstrate how to repackage messages. And they describe the nuances of each principle, explaining which kind of appeals work best in different situations.

The bottom line: Change behaviors by getting your health messages to stick with the 6 principles in Made to Stick.

You probably know that we ❤ health literacy. (Did our name give it away?) And since you’re reading this, you probably do too. But every once in a while, it’s important to ask ourselves: Why does health literacy matter?

It’s easy for those of us in the field to forget how many people out there don’t understand how crucial health literacy is. Part of our job, then, is to spread the gospel. We must always be prepared, dear readers, to respond to an earnest question from a colleague or a challenge from a misguided “dumbing down” dissenter.

We think these facts make a pretty good quick pitch:

• Only 1 in 10 U.S. adults have the skills needed to use health information that is routinely available in health care facilities, retail outlets, and the media.
• People with poor health are 5 times more likely to have below basic health literacy skills than people in good health. (This reality is compounded by the fact that health literacy skills decrease when you’re stressed or sick.)
• People with limited health literacy skills often get worse care and have more medication errors, longer hospital stays, and higher death rates.

It’s no abstraction. Health literacy — or the lack of it — has a direct impact on people’s well-being and health. The good news is that by making health information easier for everyone to understand, we can improve health outcomes for millions of Americans. And, we might add, this is waaaaaay more cost-effective than complex medical interventions.

How about you? What makes you passionate about health literacy and drives you to spread the word? Tell us in the comments below.

The bottom line: Sometimes it’s important to take a step back and remember why we all ❤ health literacy — and why we need to keep spreading the word.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled FAQ series to celebrate 2 years of We ❤ Health Literacy! (The “terrible 2s” only apply to people and not weekly health literacy musings, right?)

To celebrate, we’re sharing this year’s top 5 posts for your re-reading amusement. Enjoy!

• How Not to Use Illustrations and Infographics
• It’s time to cut the clip art!
• Our Favorite Health Homepages
• Ebola and Health Literacy
• Other Things We ❤: Grammar Girl

And of course it wouldn’t be a We ❤ Health Literacy birthday without a big thanks to all of you for being the best and brightest readers. We’re so grateful for your support, and we look forward to getting more of your great topic ideas in year 3!

Oh, and if you want to get us a present, we ❤ it when you encourage your fellow health literacy geeks to sign up.

The bottom line: It’s our birthday (again) and we couldn’t have done it without you!

In this edition of We ❤ Health Literacy FAQs, we’re taking a look at style guides. We tend to get 3 main questions about them — hopefully the responses below will help!

What style guide does CommunicateHealth use?
We have an in-house style guide that’s focused on plain language, specific health terms, and our unique voice and tone. For all other debates we default to an imprecise mix of guidance from the Chicago Manual of Style and our preference for writing how we speak (granted, a bit more abstract). Lots of our clients have their own style guides, too.

How do I get others on board with breaking old grammar rules?
Language is always evolving. This is especially true now, given the advent of writing for the web and the growing popularity of plain language. It’s time to accept that some grammar rules are meant to be broken. Advocate for writing conversationally. The rest will follow.

And if you must, you can develop a separate plain language style guide for consumer writing. Keep the stodgy old one for professional audiences.

How do I create a plain language style guide?
This task can be daunting, dear reader — but keep in mind that Rome wasn’t built in a day. A quality style guide is created over time. Keep a running list of issues that come up. When you get into a debate over whether it’s 9th grade, ninth grade, or grade 9, make a note of your decision. When you come up with a great plain language definition for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, write that down, too! Before you know it, you’ll have the outline of a style guide.

The bottom line: Style guides are important for keeping your content consistent, but they’re meant to be flexible.

Over the years, we’ve had a lot of conversations about punctuation (or over-punctuation) in plain language writing. And some of you, our dear readers, have asked: If punctuation can be a sticking point for readers with limited literacy skills, does that mean I can’t use contractions in my plain language writing?

First, we totally agree about punctuation overkill. Health writers, beware: Gratuitous punctuation marks can make life harder for people with limited literacy skills. Plus, if your content needs that much punctuation, it’s a red flag that your sentences are too long or complicated (just think of what can happen when semicolons get involved!).

Ultimately though, we put contractions into a different category — specifically, the “write how you talk” one. You’ve probably already noticed how much we value striking the right tone in health writing, and we’d argue that writing conversationally is a really important part of that.

So our rule of thumb is to use a contraction if you’d say the contraction out loud. Don’t stress about the apostrophe!

But it’s not quite that simple. (What fun is a rule that you can’t ever break, right?!) There are exceptions. For us, the big one is when you need to be really clear about the difference between something that “is” and something that “is not.” Here’s an example:

• Okay: Drinking alcohol while taking this medicine isn’t safe.
• Better: Drinking alcohol while taking this medicine is not safe.

Someone quickly skimming the first message might walk away thinking it’s safe to drink while taking that new med, while the second message is crystal clear.

The bottom line: We ❤️ contractions because they make content conversational.

Tweet about it: To contract or not to contract in #PlainLanguage writing? @CommunicateHlth says keep contractions in health education materials when you’d say them out loud. Read more: https://bit.ly/3G95DnD #HealthLit