Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Health lit





This week's class was by far my favorite class of the entire semester. Yesterday, we learned about health literacy-- obtaining, processing, and understanding health info. We also watched "In Plain Language," a video created by the Harvard School of Public Health to raise awareness about the need for effective communication in medicine and public health. I loved it. I was amazed at the number of Americans who do not understand health information, and the video definitely made me appreciate my education. I had no idea that ~ 50% of Americans have low literacy skills. The personal stories told by students from an adult learning center were fascinating, and I couldn't help but want to help them. In the video, the students describe how limited literacy has affected their health. For example, one woman did not know what "twice daily" meant. She wasn't sure if this meant twice in the morning, twice at night, or at different times throughout the day. Another man explained that when answering questions on a health survey, he often answers "no" to questions he really just doesn't understand in order to avoid embarrassment. One woman accidentally got a hysterectomy, and another woman went to the store to find cough drops without sugar for her diabetic husband, but didn't know that fructose and glucose were sugars. The video was extremely interesting, but very sad at the same time.

"In Plain Language" also touched on the need for health care professionals to use language that can be understood by patients. Many times clinicians forget that not everyone has had the same schooling, and that the vocabulary they use may be confusing or misunderstood. This reminded me of a conversation I had with my neighbor-- a pretty intelligent guy might I add. He asked me what my thesis topic was and I explained that I was looking at house rules in relation to TV viewing while eating meals and its association with child BMI. He gave me a confused look and asked what BMI meant. 'What? Who doesn't know what BMI is?' is the first thing I thought. "Body Mass Index. Duh." is the first thing I said. I soon realized, as a econ major, my neighbor doesn't talk about promoting healthy lifestyles, behavior change, BMI, etc. etc. on a daily basis. When he still didn't understand Body Mass Index, I simplified it by using "plain language" and said, "basically body fat." Then he got it.

After the video we played with a health literacy program called SMOG... so much fun! This site determines the readability level of written material, and helps match the reading level of health information with the reading ability of target audiences. I liked it.

It's the end of Module 2-- Know Your Target Audiences-- and my top three learnings were the importance of segmentation to categorize and understand your target audience, the effects of low literacy on health, and the drastic need to improve health literacy in the United States. I thought Rocio's presentation on hypertension was amazing, and it gave me a much better understanding of what we should be doing for our group projects. I enjoyed reading "Is There a Hard-To-Reach Audience?" and thought Dervin's "alternative conceptualizations" to preconceptions of "hard-to-reach" individuals were fascinating. As far as designing health campaigns, I learned that effective communication should be viewed as an exchange between participants and that engaging members of your target audience is necessary to clearly understand them. I also enjoyed VALS, PRIZM NE, and SMOG-- all of which I am sure I will continue to use!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If it was the same neighbor that I live next to he would of thought BMI is bowl movement intensity!!
Love Dad

Jamie said...

hahahaha oh my god.