health communications resources – part 1

Sometimes I forget what I like using as references for my work and what I prefer referring to for advice when I’m in a bind, doing health education/communications work, and what I don’t, but here are some resources for those of you who may or may not be in the Health Education field but still need to make materials that you’re hoping someone other than yourself or your superiors will understand. (Correct, that sentence was not meant to be readable).

But what are health communications?

The National Cancer Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention define Health Communications as:

The study and use of communication strategies to inform and influence individual and community decisions that enhance health.

Read about it, and get some more info about some specific CDC prevention campaigns, as well as a bigger list of resources than I’d ever be able to give you at:

http://www.cdcnpin.com/scripts/campaign/strategy.asp

But today I have a few comments about a quick place to start: online are many government-sponsored booklets (they after all, have been doing this stuff for years).

The CDC has an aptly named booklet called Simply Put. Provides very appropriate instructions and examples on how you might write, organize, and modify text to make it more accessible to diverse populations. Includes readability scoring instructions at the end too! The PDF may be 48 pages long, but hey, the majority of them are blank pages and tons of white space (good for readability!)

Simply Put – http://www.cdc.gov/od/oc/simpput.pdf

National Cancer Institute (NCI) has the Pink Book (Making Health Communication Programs Work), which I’d never heard of (although I think it may have been mentioned in my courses and I just didn’t know what it meant, and promptly forgot). It quite literally is a pink book, if you have an older print version. This book has been out for years and years and is certainly one of the standard references of people in this field, but NCI no longer publishes these in print, but the materials are updated and available online and in PDF format as well. All very searchable.

The book walks an individual through the stages of the health communication process: from planning, to developing, to implementation, to assessment – with examples galore and updated methods (internet included!). Solid, solid solid. It’s amazing why this isn’t required reading in our HBHE classes – breaks a lot of the steps down.

One pitfall, however, is that it is a much less theory-oriented than my PH studies – which is perhaps why we didn’t use this. It truly is a manual: step-by-steps that are clear and specific to the particular situation at hand.

Making Health Communication Programs Work – http://www.cancer.gov/pinkbook

That’s all for now… updates as soon as I remember them

check-in

my research is taking the unfortunate turn away from an asian-american focus and looking more broadly at racially/ethnically diverse populations. okay, maybe that’s not unfortunate, but not what i’d initially envisioned at least. most importantly, i’m trying to decipher what the cultural and personal values are that influence the racial/ethnic disparities that we see in prenatal screening and testing uptake. but in designing this study, it really looks more at more broadly, what these values are, and how they influence a woman’s perceived severity of prenatal screening outcomes (the conditions that are screened for). rarely have the women themselves been asked “hey, what do you want screened on prenatal screening if it were your decision, how good/bad of an outcome would you consider those things, and would you consider screening or terminating over it?”. that’s the general gist. asking the client/patient themselves, what do they see as valuable

A look at our Active Minds Print Campaign Materials

Finally finished with the Active Minds project! Here’s a look at what we spent a lot of our time working on, and it’s definitely amazing, the printed products will be produced soon and then sent away to Active Minds to officially distribute! My group members and I are really proud of this and, if I must say so myself, the set looks pretty damn good. Check it out:

check-in

so i learned today that i was included in the graduating class’ picture postcard/brunch invite. they have my name down with (honorary) next to it… the rationale was that there weren’t any pictures without me in it. haha. interesting. i don’t know though, the pic is maybe a little weird cause i’m pretty front and center with a scarf but just a tshirt. weird. everyone and their mother and their father and their extended family will think i’m weird.

on another note, seminar’s over!

presentation of my survey project in the survey class was really great. it was nice finally being able to talk about some concrete things in class for once, and it was certainly encouraging that people found it interesting. here’s an image of what part the final survey looked like (including the language i used to describe DS, PS, and prenatal testing)

on this same topic, had a meeting with my first research mentor (peds MD, interested in screening). and i have to say it was very very very good. she was extremely excited for my work and i think our personalities mesh very well, and she had some amazing ideas, letting me step back from what i was doing and see the bigger picture, and see where the direction i really was trying to get at but couldn’t articulate. i think i may be going much more hypothetical with my research than the direction i’ve been going with the AAPI, but it’ll certainly be an important thing to consider. i meet with another potential mentor tomorrow (OB/GYN with an MPH?, never met her before), but hopefully she’ll get excited too! and then i’ll have a real research project and can finally get my grade for research skills from last winter. ha.

so the big news today is really that i finally finished up the big project for my genetics and health bx/health ed class today! i initially wanted to create a patient brochure/slideshow/video of the intricacies and patient concerns regarding SEQureDX and the level of research and levels of detection that the technology can provide. however, i felt a little left out when i couldn’t go to ACMG this year in tampa to really hear from Sequenom how exactly the technology works…

SO, ever since i had the cultural competence class in my materials/methods class in HBHE, i’ve been wanting to develop a new model/tool/activity for addressing cultural “competence” training that we get as GC students. well, i did it! and i incorporated a lot of the techniques i was learning from the public health end of things, including some very participatory research based techniques, to help address the lack of introspection and personal evaluation that was missing from traditional cultural “competence” trainings. again, really working toward cultural humility rather than competence. well, that assignment got turned in for the class, but i also forwarded it to my materials/methods professor to get her opinions as to its feasibility as well as my program director who knew a bit about it already. really, honestly, two birds with one stone.

so tomorrow, i’ll be finishing up with my group for materials/methods our print education tool that we’ve been developing all semester for Active Minds. we’ll have the final product hopefully finalized (postcards, posters, and bookmarks) to start a print campaign for this nonprofit org. that’s never had a print campaign. it’s really exciting, there’s nearly 200 chapters where thes items will get distributed.

ah! in the final few days!

Finished with Student Seminar!

wow i’m really glad this is over. everything back in feb. that was causing me grief, then got postponed, then was causing me stress in recent weeks was this assignment in its singularity! here are a few bits and pieces of what i talked about. no i don’t want to explain it any more.