Academy for Educational Development

Washington, D.C., April 8, 2004 — [Note to Editors: Dr. Smith is available to speak to media about examples of changes that were made to materials for the Children's Health Insurance Program as a result of testing with target audiences, something the IOM report calls for.]

STEPS TO IMPROVE HEALTH LITERACY

“Today’s Institute of Medicine report challenges our health system to communicate in a fundamentally different way.

“Instead of putting out information in “scientifically” correct ways, we must now recognize that the language of health is filled with jargon that confuses and frustrates Americans of all education levels. Ninety million Americans have difficulty of making practical sense out of English-language instructions – in hospitals, doctor’s offices, on the Internet, in the newspaper and on insurance forms.

“There is no one answer. But one place to start is by involving patients and citizens in developing health communication materials that make sense to them. Patients will often have very different ideas about what’s important to emphasize.

“In addition, health communicators should always follow tested guidelines about how to effectively communicate with low-literate audiences. This includes everything from the number of words in a sentence, to calculations like weight by age, percentages, and timing of medications.

“Our experience shows that effective health communication requires the involvement of the people who we want to get the message and take action.

”To educate the health community about the report, AED produced a CD-Rom with the IOM containing an overview video of the report and its recommendations, video clips of patients, and full text of the executive summary of this report and related reports.”

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Dr. Smith is an expert in social marketing and health communications, co-founder of the Social Marketing Institute, and a columnist and editorial board member of the Social Marketing Quarterly. He authored a recent book entitled Fostering Community-Based Social Marketing and has published dozens of articles on how social marketing can be used to support social change.

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