User:CFCF/sandbox

Simply Put

A guide for creating easy-to-understand materials

What’s in this guide? Communication that is Clear and Understandable..................................................3

Where this Guide Fits into an Overall Communication Plan...............................4

Make Your Message Clear ........................................... ..............................................5

Text Appearance Matters ....................... .................................................................9

Visuals Help Tell Your Story ....................................................................................10

Layout and Design........................................................................................17

Consider Culture................................................................................23

Translations Take Your Message Further ..................................................................25

Testing for Readability ...............................................................................................27

Appendix A - Checklist for Easy-to-Understand Print Materials...............................29

Appendix B - Resources for Communication Planning .............................................30

Appendix C - Formulas for Calculating Readability .................................................31

Appendix D - Resources ............................................................................................38

Acknowledgements............................................................................43

Communication that is Clear and Understandable

Communicating a broad range of health messages to a wide variety of audiences can be challenging. Differences among audiences make it necessary to avoid the one-size fits-all mindset when developing effective health communication materials. Culture and literacy skills are two important factors, among others, to consider when designing health communication materials that will capture the intended audience’s attention.

According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), released in 2006 by the U.S. Department of Education, 30 million adults struggle with basic reading tasks. The NAAL also found that only 12 percent of consumers have proficient health literacy skills1— suggesting that nearly nine out of ten adults may lack many of the skills necessary to sufficiently manage their health. Low health literacy can affect a person’s ability to locate health care providers and services, fill out health forms, share personal health information with providers, manage chronic diseases and engage in self-care.

It is important to remember; however, that even those with higher health literacy skills want health information that is understandable, meaningful to them, and easy to use.

In This Guide:

The guidance in Simply Put helps you transform complicated scientific and technical information into communication materials your audiences can relate to and understand. The guide provides practical ways to organize information and use language and visuals. This guide will be useful for creating fact sheets, FAQ’s, brochures, booklets, pamphlets, and other materials, including web content.

Where this Guide Fits into an Overall Communication Plan

Developing a communication plan involves many steps. This guide will help you accomplish just one of them – designing your health communication materials.

There are several things to do before you start:

• Identify the intended audience and define the key health problem/s or interest/s.
• Get to know the intended audience to help determine their key characteristics, including gender, race/ethnicity, location, beliefs, behaviors, culture, literacy skills, and current knowledge about the identified topic.
• Determine key messages. Be sure to test them with the intended audience to ensure they will be received appropriately.
• Determine the best way to communicate messages to the audience (i.e., print, audio, video).
• Decide how to distribute the materials to the audience (i.e., mail, brochure display, web page).

An early step in the development process is determining whether the intended audience needs or wants the information your material will provide. This ensures that funds and staff time will be used wisely. Learning about the interests, needs, and values of the intended audience allows for more targeted materials. Knowing the best ways to reach your audience will help to decide on the most effective format and design for your materials.

Once you have developed a draft of your material, be sure to pretest it with the intended audience. Pretesting helps ensure that the message you send is the message your intended audience receives, rather than some other interpretation. Make appropriate revisions to your materials according to the findings of the pretest.

The final steps in developing health communication materials are to market it and distribute it, and re- evaluate its effectiveness in communicating key messages to your intended audience. This guide does not discuss all of these steps, but Appendix B contains a list of resources to help you through many aspects of communication planning.

Steps for Developing Health Communication Materials

That Are Evidence-Based and User Friendly

1. Identify intended audience and define/research the key health problems or interests
2. Engage the intended audience- determine what their needs, beliefs/values, and interests are, and their level of knowledge of the identified health topic
3. Determine key concepts and messages based on knowledge of the audience
4. Design a draft of the material
5. Pretest materials with intended audience
6. Tweak draft according to feedback from the audience
7. Publish and distribute materials
8. Evaluate the audiences’ satisfaction and understanding

Make your Message Clear

Creating materials that lead to increased knowledge or a change in beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors requires messages that are clear, relevant, and appropriate for the intended audience. This section gives tips for deciding what to say and how to say it so the audience will understand, remember, and act on your message.

1. Give the most important information first
   To quickly engage the audience:

   • Give the most important information first

1. • Tell them what actions to take
   • Explain why it is important to them
2. For example:
3. Always wash hands with soap and warm water for 20 seconds before and after handling food. Food and water can carry germs that may make you and your family sick.

1. Limit the number of messages
   Give your audience no more than three or four main ideas per document or section of your document.

1. Focus on what your audience needs to know and do. Skip details that are only nice to know. If you are writing a brochure on how to prevent Lyme disease, you don’t need to tell the audience how and when Lyme disease was discovered. Tell them what to do to prevent it instead.

   Stick to one idea at a time

1. Stick to one idea at a time. Develop one idea fully before moving to the next idea. People are confused when materials skip back and forth between topics.

   Avoid lengthy lists. Create short lists (3-7 items) with bullets, not commas. People with limited reading skills tend to forget items in longer lists. If you have a long list, break it into subheads.