Feature
October 2011
You heard—and understood—it here first: Group Health leads in plain language
When President Obama made plain language the law last year, Group Health Research Institute was already bringing change we can believe in to health care information.
Plain language just means clear communication. But achieving it, especially for technical and nuanced medical information, is not easy. Fortunately, Group Health Research Institute has two experts: Sarah M. Greene, MPH, research associate, and Jessica Ridpath, research communications consultant. They were invited presenters at the August 2011 National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing and Media, sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Their message: Group Health encourages, expects, and supports clear communication, and so can other health care systems.
"We presented a model for other organizations to follow that has three elements: trust, tools, and traction," says Ridpath. "When people trust you, it’s easier for them to see plain language as a solution to communication problems, and giving them effective tools makes the work easier. You get traction when you show that plain language is doable and fits with organizational goals."
Trust us: clear communication saves time and money
Plain language is not "dumbing down" or "talking down." It's clear, to the point, and takes less time to read and understand, say the National Institutes of Health. And it saves money. Veterans Affairs found that rewriting a letter in plain language increased response rates, saving $8 million in follow-up costs.
Tools to help researchers and other medical professionals communicate more clearly are found in PRISM (Program for Readability in Science and Medicine), developed by Ridpath, Greene, and Cheryl J. Wiese, MS, now of the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. Originally an internal training program, PRISM is now a suite of resources used by a global audience. The free Readability Toolkit has guidelines, lists of everyday words to replace complex terms, and templates for common research documents such as consent forms. Ridpath provides editing and workshops, and anyone can take the one-hour online PRISM course developed with the University of Washington Institute for Translational Health Sciences.
As for traction in showing the benefits of plain language, words speaker louder than jargon. An example from the course compares these sentences. Which seems more likely to attract research participants?
- If your initial screening evaluation indicates you have hypertension, you will be asked to participate in the second phase of this research investigation.
- If your tests show you have high blood pressure, we will ask you to be in the second part of this study.
Clear communication and social media
Plain language goes beyond words on paper. One of Greene's current collaborations is a multicenter study on spoken health messages. "We need to know if people understand what they hear, since so much health information is delivered verbally," she says.
This includes both patient/provider and online communication. For high-profile studies, Group Health Research Institute posts videos of researchers describing their work, so scientists and clinicians must be able to deliver a message that the media will convey accurately to a wide audience. Clear communication is vital for connecting with the largest possible community, and this is where the unexpected partners of effective health care and social media meet.
Brief, fleeting Facebook posts and Twitter tweets don't seem to belong in the solid world of science, but conference presenters showed that social media can be a useful research tool, says Greene. Group Health is on Facebook and Twitter, and for several years, Greene has run the Twitter feed @researchmatters, alerting followers from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to the American Cancer Society to notable developments in medical research and health care.
Greene says social media is useful for more than just marketing, though. "Our goal in research is influencing behavior, whether it's for vaccine adherence or quitting smoking," she says. "Social media can connect to people who have been hard to reach for interventions and study recruitment, and virtual connections can lead to human ones." And face it, she says, social media isn't going away. "It's only becoming more prominent, so it's in our interest to use it to become a credible source of information." New media still plays by the old rules, too. The 140-character limit of a Twitter post means clear communication is essential.
Ridpath and Greene say that with plain language now the law of the land, Group Health can continue to lead by example. Using evidence-based engagement strategies could help us devise smart new ways to interact with patients and communities. "The inspiring message from the conference," says Ridpath, "is that with new methods for gathering and communicating with people, we can do research right now on what works in health communication."
Group Health Resources:
PRISM
www.grouphealthresearch.org/capabilities/readability/
readability_home.html#prism_toolkit
PRISM Online Training
http://prism.grouphealthresearch.org
Facebook
www.facebook.com/group.health.research.institute
YouTube
www.youtube.com/user/GHCooperative
Twitter
www.twitter.com/GHResearch
@researchmatters (Sarah Greene)
www.twitter.com/researchmatters
Health Literacy Out Load Podcast (An interview with Jessica Ridpath will be posted November 15, 2011.)
www.healthliteracyoutloud.com
Plain Language at NIH (with link to the Plain Writing Act of 2010)
www.nih.gov/clearcommunication/plainlanguage.htm