We all want – and deserve – plain language information about our health! More than 3 out of 4 adults have looked for health or medical information. And 8 in 10 Internet users have searched for health information online. Imagine if all of these searches resulted in clear, actionable information – information that could be used in everyday life.

At CommunicateHealth, we are committed to creating health information that is easy to access, understand, and use – for everyone. Check out our latest infographic for more information.

We are the 90%!

• The New York Times‘ ‘Well’

Well is lead by health writer Tara Parker-Pope. The blog features medical research news, social health trends, and tear-brimming guest blogs.

• Pulse + Signal

Health communications consultant and popular health 2.0-personality, Andre Blackman, marries technology with public health.

• Pop Health

Philadelphia-based blogger, Leah Roman, MPH, examines the relationship between pop culture and public health.

• Jay Parkinson MD

Jay Parkinson, the “Doctor of the Future,” posts about public health and living in Brooklyn, while running his latest venture The Future Well.

• The Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog

Our staff has deemed this site as the most consistent and best source for news on health and health care business.

• Social Butterfly

Alexandra Bornkessel is Interactive eHealth Manager at CommunicateHealth’s partner IQ Solutions. She writes in-depth about social media, marketing, and public health.

These were a few of the questions that were explored at the 2012 UPA Boston Conference. UPA 2012 allowed professionals to engage with each other and discuss important topics like behavior change, writing content for the Web, healthcare, and accessibility.

CommunicateHealth staff also discussed evidence-based strategies for writing and designing user-friendly health content (slide show below).

Here are a few of our UPA highlights:

• Aimee, Usability Associate:
  • I am very excited to internally discuss how we can vary the delivery of our formative research results to clients. Carolyn Snyder, Dharmesh Mistry, Eva Kaniasty, Jen McGinn, and Steve Krug all offered unique insight about reporting methods and content.
• Mel, Web Designer:
  • I really enjoyed Adam Connor’s session, “Design Studio: a Method for Idea Generation, Critique, and Iteration.” I can’t wait to start directly engaging with clients and involving them in the problem-solving aspects of design!
• Molly, Creative Director:
  • Fred Abaroa’s talk about presentation skills was engaging and memorable — and lived up to the hype.  Body language and tone can stand out far more than the words you actually say, so using hand gestures, avoiding monotone speech, presenting a positive image, and paying attention to the mood of your audience is key.
• Sarah, Usability Associate:
  • Based on their work on Staples.com, I’m excited to build on card-sorting and labeling studies with tree testing as discussed by Wolf & Harter. This is a great method to validate site organization and labels that have come out of card sorting, without going through costly prototype building and testing.

Thanks to all of the fantastic presenters for a great day!

This conference is a unique opportunity for CommunicateHealth to highlight the intersection of usability and literacy as it relates to the research, design, and evaluation of the user experience of online products and services. We’re especially excited to present at our session, “Reader-centered Design for Health Communication,” because – unlike most of the conferences we’ve attended in the past – the UPA Boston event is not solely focused on health-related issues. We hope that through our presentation, we’ll bring issues of health literacy to the forefront for professionals from outside the health literacy field.

You can still register to attend this one-day conference. We’re looking forward to attending other sessions on innovative topics like:

• Designing for People who Struggle with Reading and Attention
• Delivering Results: How Do You Report User Research Findings?
• Conducting a Summative Study of EHR Usability

We will also be blogging conference highlights following the event, so make sure to stop by again in the next few weeks to read up on the conference.

The conference is an opportunity for the health literacy community to come together to discuss the many challenges facing the field. Featured topics include creating a health literate society, making health information more engaging, and conducting usability tests affordably.

On May 9, CommunicateHealth will be hosting the workshop “10 Tips to Make Your Health Website Easier to Use.”

Making health websites accessible and easy to use is more important than ever. Recent data shows that 80% of Internet users look for health information online. This number is likely to grow, especially in the mobile space. Nearly 100 million Americans own a smartphone, and studies show that a growing number of young adults are using their smartphones to search for health information.

Stay tuned for more information about the conference and our workshop. To register, visit the Institute for Healthcare Advancement’s Website.

SXSWh was a formidable collision of ideas, hopes, dreams, and action plans for how to utilize technology to make individuals — and America’s healthcare system — healthier. Attendees included leaders from the government, start-ups, start-up accelerators, insurance companies, hospitals, academia, and, of course, the tech industry.

“Changing behavior is the holy grail.”

Most of the health technologies featured at SXSWh tried to assist people in making healthier decisions. As the Chairman & CEO of Aetna, Mark Bertolini, so aptly put it at his SXSW appearance, this is the “holy grail” for health professionals.

Here’s how technology is changing behavior:

• Tracking and visualizing data so users can make informed decisions about their health.
• Facilitating access to health information and medical professionals.
• Socializing your data – so you’re accountable in real time to your friend, your mom, and your doctor simultaneously.

The Internet and the smart phone are still the most popular platforms for this technology. Apps such as Ginger.io, Massive Health’s The Eatery, and LoseIt, to name a few, are changing how we view our health.

Ryan Panchadsaram, Co-Founder of Pipette, said he has heard of a doctor prescribing mobile apps like these to his patients, and then holding those patients accountable by following the app data.

More fascinating, however, is when you break down the smart phone wall and start embedding this technology into everyday objects — like GlowCaps. This, more than anything, seems to be where the future is headed, as Amber Case attested to in her SXSWh keynote talk about the future of technological interfaces.

Data, Data, the Aggregation of Data, and, Did We Mention, More Data?

A key part of solving the behavior change puzzle is data. Right now, data is all over the place: one app has our diet data, another has our exercise data, and then we have data sitting in electronic medical record (EMR) programs across multiple doctors’ offices.

What was echoed at SXSWh again and again is that data needs to be aggregated in order to be truly useful. The challenge however, is how and by whom.

Our work with Anvita Health shows that institutions can start by translating data they already have into actionable information for consumers. This enhances health and behavior decisions by “presenting clinical data in ways that consumers can understand and use.”

Start-ups vs. the Health Care System

SXSW is a haven for tech start-ups. Unlike your average start-up, Health 2.0 start-ups can come up against very large, intimidating roadblocks like insurance companies, hospitals, government, and patient privacy laws.

The answer from those who have succeeded is, don’t let it stop you.  SXSW is a significant platform for start-ups and major health players to come together, but thankfully it’s no longer the only one. Code for America, Health 2.0, and efforts by city leaders like New York City’s Chief Digital Officer, Rachel Sterne, are now regularly pairing techies with large private and public organizations.

We’re Only at the Tip of the Iceberg

This is all just getting started! Ten years ago, there were no iPhones. Now I can tweet my weight. It’s all happening, but patience is still a virtue.

Some of the conference’s most interesting moments were comments from the few health practitioners in the audience. They would often ask, “This is all fine and good at SXSW, but how does this technology actually help my patients?” The answer was, largely, that it doesn’t — yet.

Other SXSW Wrap-Ups

Here are some other interesting SXSW health track wrap-ups worth reading:

• Why Every Health Professional Should Come to SXSWh via @StartupHealth
• What Health Conferences Can Learn from SXSW
• SXSW Woodstock for Geeks via @Rock_Health
• Can Hipsters Save Healthcare? Lessons from SXSW

Only in business for three years, Stacy, Xanthi, Sandy and the rest of the CommunicateHealth team have amassed an impressive array of government clients and diverse, successful projects. Starting with only three staff members, three short years later CommunicateHealth has over 20 employees – and revenues have more than quadrupled. In 2011, the company was awarded its first large prime IDIQ contract.

Most importantly, quality and responsiveness to client needs has remained excellent and CommunicateHealth continues to pull down a 95+ rating from clients (Duns & Bradstreet).  Under the co-founders’ direction, CommunicateHealth has won numerous awards for their work on consumer websites and plain language materials development. The entire staff is committed to health literacy and health education in a digital world.

CommunicateHealth helps federal and private sector organizations communicate clearly – via print and interactive media – with consumers. We specialize in plain language writing, content management, user-centered design, and usability testing for health websites. CommunicateHealth’s federal clients include the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

View the announcement from the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce.

We arrived on Friday in time to hear opening statements from Doug Sellers and Casey Caplowe of GOOD. Kickstarter Co-Founder Charles Adler gave a quick inspirational speech about taking risks and the need for iteration.

On Saturday, the work began. CommunicateHealth’s delegation – Creative Director Molly McLeod, Designer Mel Choyce, and Web Associate Perrie Briskin – teamed up with Lily Cho, Kanjana Yotjan, Mike Serritella, and Nina Pavlich to start brainstorming.

Here at CommunicateHealth, we know that behavior change starts with small, simple steps, like going for a walk. We decided to combine that idea with the desire to get to know our neighbors and become part of a community. Our project, TalkWalk, focused on connecting people with similar interests who spend time in the same neighborhoods, whether at work, home, or school. With TalkWalk, users could browse for people with matching interests, locations, and schedules, and invite those people to go for a walk. An icebreaker app would provide questions that users could ask each other to start conversations on the topics that interest them.

Mel and Molly work on mockups. Perrie and Mike review the script.

We spent the day thinking about how the service would work, creating personas and scenarios for use, designing mockups, and writing a script for the presentation. We framed our presentation around the persona of Anne, a young mom who recently moved to a new neighborhood and works from home.

Check out our final presentation:

A few other groups had a walking focus, including the winner for Most Innovative, EveryStep, an app/service that would allow friends to pledge micro-donations for every step the user takes or mile the user runs. These donations would add up in the long term, translating into significant funds for organizations. And the user would get encouragement for a positive, sustainable lifestyle change. Check out the rest of the Hackathon winners on the GOOD blog.

Hackathons are great for harnessing brainpower and bringing designers, developers, and strategists together to rapidly brainstorm creative solutions to problems – big and small. We’re thinking about organizing our own health-focused hackathon later this year – stay tuned!

At the center of the discussion of Health 2.0 possibilities is health literacy: the ability to gather and process health information — and to use that information to make informed health decisions. Health 2.0 applications and gadgets are uniquely poised to engage us in our own health, and raise health literacy levels in the process — something public health officials have been trying to do for decades.

Health 2.0 gadgets that allow us to monitor our own health are still in their infancy. Tools such as Withings’ Blood Pressure Monitor have only been on the market for a year or two, and things like the iBGStar blood glucose monitor are still in development. Then there are tools like the EyeNetra device, which turns smart phones into eye exam machines, mostly for those without access to eye care. This handful of tools shows us the future is rife with possibility.

The folks over at Software Advice recently peered into this future and made a few hefty predictions about where Health 2.0 gadgets are headed:

• A diabetes risk calculator that, through measuring certain proteins in the blood, could detect whether a person is on track for developing type 2 diabetes.
• A digital spirometer that could measure the volume of air going in and out of the lungs to help people who frequently feel a shortness of breath.

At CommunicateHealth, we’re looking forward to seeing what Health 2.0 comes up with next. The hope is that these devices will get us more actively involved in our health care. And at the very least, they will make it possible for health care workers with limited resources to provide a level of care unimaginable 50 years ago. A healthier world is always the goal — time will tell if gadgets like these can get us a little closer.

Vic Strecher’s Keynote Brings Inspiration and… Spirituality?

“We expect people to see our health message, say ‘Aha! Thank you, I never knew that before,’ and then do what we want them to do.” A lot of heads in the audience nodded at this and other observations by Vic Strecher. His keynote speech got us asking big questions like:

• If all our models are about morbidity and mortality, how can we expect people to take a “health assessment” without it feeling like a “death assessment”?
• Research shows that we aren’t good at making healthy decisions when under heavy cognitive load. How can we ease that load to help make those choices easier?
• If affirming personal values like empathy helps us make better choices for our health, why do we keep asking people about their risk factors instead of their hopes and beliefs?
• How can new technology help add tools like motivational interviewing into digital health interventions?

We’re really excited to put some of these concepts into action in our work at CommunicateHealth… stay tuned.

Digital Media — The digital self, the earned conversation, and the meaningful relationship

Rohit Bhargava, Craig Lefebve, and Gary Kreps got us thinking about digital identities, our truly social networks, and building meaningful health promoting relationships.

A few thoughts from this panel:

• By adding values to our online identities, we’re beginning the process of self-affirmation discussed earlier by Vic Stretcher. How can digitizing the self help us get better at making difficult health choices?
• We know that smokers stick with other smokers, and obese people tend to know other obese people. How can we reach key influencers in increasingly homogenized social groups?
• Nonverbal aspects of interpersonal communication can be integrated in digital communication. This means it’s more important than ever to design simple, welcoming products and tools. (And remember, simple tools help ease cognitive load!)
• How are readability, usability, and customization related to the credibility of our messages?

Ending with Innovation

The last speakers of the conference, Lawrence Swiader and Leigh Calabrese-Eck, shared interesting new campaigns that both try to change the tone of traditional health messaging to better connect with their audiences.

(And a good example of “tone fail”: Lawrence asks, “Why do the people on this vaginitis brochure look so… happy?”)

• Bedsider.org isn’t about what type of birth control is “right” — it’s about what type is right for you. We love IDEO’s work, and weren’t surprised to learn that a number of users were involved in the creation and development of the site and complementary materials (like the new app Booty Log).
• Eliza Corp. uses automated telephone calls with friendly, fun messages to engage people with their health insurance carriers. Themes include “Talk health to me, baby,” among others.

Hitting the right note with messaging was a big theme of this panel: is the slick, sexy look of Bedsider.org what a woman struggling with choices about birth control really wants to see? Is a “love letter from your heart” what a person wants to hear from their HMO? It sounds like these campaigns are striving to listen to their audiences and will continue to hone the content and style of their messages.

Finally…

A huge thank you to Jay Bernhardt, the University of Florida, and everyone who was involved with this conference. It was a very special group of thinkers (and doers!).

Also, thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth to check out the conversation on the live Twitter feed, see some examples of our work, and take our daily poll (did you know that 8 out of 11 DHCX attendees want to get emails from their doctor in between visits?). We look forward to seeing you all again next year!

(Can’t wait till the next DHCX to hear from us? Make sure to follow @CommunicateHlth when we report on the SXSW Interactive Health track from Austin next month.)