As members of the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP) health literacy team, we are committed to promoting the use of health literacy principles. We recently took a deep dive into the online user experience to write the second edition of Health Literacy Online: A Guide to Simplifying the User Experience, and are honored to have been recognized with a Clear Mark Award for our efforts. We learned a lot about the challenges many people face using health websites. We wanted to share some lessons we learned with those of you who are involved in creating online health content—writers and editors, content managers, digital strategists, user experience strategists, web designers, developers, and other public health communication professionals.
Guest blog
Homepage real estate …or, Battle of the bulletin board
My office has a break room with the usual appointments: tables, chair, refrigerators, vending machines, microwave, Keurig, electric teakettle. And a bulletin board.
I was pleased to see the bulletin board because there’s always so many interesting things there. Some of us bring back menus from local restaurants, some others post current events, others bring in things like the card for the mobile bike repair shop on 18th Street.
Getting doctors to use plain language and other ways to improve patient understanding
Health professionals have the challenging job of translating the jargon they learned in professional school to everyday language that people can understand. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has help in the form of the AHRQ Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit, Second Edition.
Study finds plain language makes court forms more user-friendly
Jury duty, though sometimes an inconvenient chore, is at the core of the American justice system. Because jury pools draw from all walks of life, they are generally representative of the diverse American public. As such, jury pools are also an excellent testing ground for readability studies.
The Power of “You”: Using the Plain and the Personal to Engage Patients
“Patient engagement” has become a buzzword in health care, and for good reason. For anyone whose job it is to get patients to act—to take their medicines, to come in for their A1c test, to change their diet, to make a decision—finding ways to engage those patients in their health is a must.
CDC’s Everyday Words from Idea to Reality
I assume all plain language experts who teach, edit, and review have confronted that exasperated sigh from a colleague: So you don’t like the word I’m using. What do you want me to use instead? This question often comes with an eye roll, grimace, or note of panic because of an approaching deadline.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Office of the Associate Director for Communication published Everyday Words for Public Health Communication in November 2015. It is Version 1 of plain language suggestions – not mandates – to answer that “what instead” question. This blog is the story of how the document came to be.