Communication barriers in the health field plague people from a variety of income, education, and cultural backgrounds. Misunderstandings, from the doctor’s office to the pharmacy, delay healing for individuals and often prevent marginalized communities from receiving health care at all.
Health Literacy Media, a nonprofit based in the Delmar DivINe building, aims to improve communication among health systems, providers, and patients worldwide. The organization formed in 2009 and defines “health literacy” as more than just a skillset that some people have developed and others lack. Rather, it explains health literacy is “a multidimensional concept influenced by how healthcare systems operate, how healthcare professionals share information, and how patients understand information.”
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“That old definition is what we call the deficit approach: ‘If people were only smarter and had it all together, this wouldn’t be a problem,’” HLM president and CEO Catina O’Leary explains. “We know that that’s not true because even the smartest people have trouble when they get a cancer diagnosis, or they have a stroke, or something really bad happens to them.”
HLM estimates that 9 in 10 adults in the U.S. struggle to access, understand, and use health information, which could result in bad health decisions, mismanagement of a chronic condition, or complications with taking medication. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also acknowledges that “a growing body of evidence shows that people with higher patient activation (i.e., the knowledge, skills, and confidence to become actively engaged in their health care) have better health outcomes” and even lower costs of care.
“A misconception is that providers don’t have a problem with health literacy,” O’Leary says. “Most of the interventions are focused on patients, when in reality, if providers had the resources or interventions in their systems to do a better job, patients wouldn’t need as much support.”
Formerly known as Health Literacy Missouri, HLM now partners with hospital systems, medical researchers, insurers, and other companies and nonprofits around the globe to assess and improve how well they’re delivering information. The nonprofit’s team draws on experience in public health and policy, plain language medical writing, graphic design, and related fields to create and revise materials, as well as provide professional training.
Through audience testing in person or virtually, HLM determines how the average person might interpret a medical document, brochure, video, or other media. Sometimes the nonprofit works with translators and then presents the material to native speakers to test how well it’s received.
“It’s the same information. It’s all accurate,” O’Leary says of the final product. “The tone that you use, the images that you use, and the sort of friendliness that you choose to use, and the way that people feel that they’re treated and respected can change everything about their experience.”
It’s all about converting information into an accessible format, whether that’s a printout or video for social media, and ensuring that the products are backed by evidence. “We’re really paying attention to where people are and how they want to get information,” O’Leary says, “and still continuing to ask people that question – because it changes really fast.”
