Health Literacy and WoM

Unfortunately I had to miss class this week. Luckily, 1) our group is awesome and it appears that we're still on fire in regards to the project AND 2) Sheila posts the slides online!

I think the concept of health literacy is extremely important and one we often forget to mention or collectively discuss. As current students we spend all of our time with our noses in the books and, unless you have a hands-on internship, you become more acquainted with talking in public health jargon rather than knowing how to translate those ideas into relate-able and understandable communication with the general public. And even in terms of the "general public", that whole concept changes once you start looking at your audience. There aren't too many people who know what the heck we mean by reciprocal determinism, but the words we use to convey that message will differ between adult groups and children groups, people with PhDs and people who didn't graduate high school. I did, however, find the comment "low HL islikely to be a major contributor to health disparities" (slide 4). Maybe in class there was more contextual analysis to this comment but it seems to me that low health literacy doesn't necessarily contribute to to health disparities. Instead it is other factors simultaneously producing low HL and health disparities (like low SES). They probably play into one another, but I think it's a stretch to say HL results in health disparities.

I appreciate the use of the SMOG application. It's an easy way to calculate the readability of a piece of literature. Word also has a function now that will determine the grade level at which you are writing in the program. I don't know if it uses the same equation that SMOG uses but it seems to be reliable and I know that other professors in the department readily rely on it for such purpose. [When you do your spell/grammar check click on "options" in the lower left hand of the pop-up box and then check off "show readability". When it is done checking your document, it will show you your level.]

The "hard to reach" population is always of interest to me. As Sheila points out, there are several reasons why these populations are hard to reach. What I thought was marked, though, was that there wasn't a discussion of what Talavera has coined "competing priorities". I think that this is a huge reason why some populations are not welcoming or receptive to some health related messages. In addition to mistrust, low HL, and the other variables Sheila listed, a poor single father of two has deaf ears to a message stating that his health is important and he needs to make time to exercise, or buy (increasingly expensive) fresh produce. My question is, when there are these competing priorities, how do we construct a health message/campaign that can break through these priorities? Maybe that is where SOC and tailored messages for awareness and education come in (though I think you can still argue that they might be ineffective given the aforementioned example).

One last thing while I'm on my soapbox here, I thought the slides on Word of Mouth communication were interesting. I've never really thought about it, but that is how so much gets started through being viral and passed on one person to one person at a time. My concern here is how to construct messages that are simple and straight forward enough so misinformation isn't spread on behalf of what we're trying to do. In 666 we very briefly talked about this, that these messages tend to be short and memorable with an easy action associated with it (Buckle Up!, Friends don't let friends drive drunk, etc) or to have name association. I think that this could be really fun to do! And creative. Essentially you're thinking up a slogan or catch phrase. It could be useful for us to do given our population...just an idea. Not that any examples are coming to mind right now!