Category: We Heart Health Literacy

If there’s one thing that gets our attention here at We ❤️ Health Literacy Headquarters, it’s a warning from the U.S. Surgeon General. Past Surgeon General’s reports have raised the alarm about a wide range of health threats facing the nation, from cigarettes in the 1960s to firearm violence in 2024. And now, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy is calling for caution around a public health threat that’s a bit more slippery to safeguard against: social media.

Back in 2023, a Surgeon General’s advisory on social media and youth mental health advocated for a safety-first approach. The report acknowledged that the evidence for the mental health effects of social media use in children and adolescents is mostly correlational — but it identified 2 main types of potential harm. The first is exposure to harmful content, which can include everything from promotion of self-harm and disordered eating to hate-based content and cyberbullying. The second is what the advisory calls “excessive and problematic use” — something we more commonly call social media addiction.

Dr. Murthy’s more recent call for a warning label on social media platforms suggests that there’s enough evidence to be concerned that the harms may outweigh the benefits — but we can’t yet say for certain if these platforms cause mental health problems the way cigarettes cause cancer.

So how can health communicators help our audiences understand and respond to this type of warning? We don’t have all the answers to this evolving problem, but we do have some thoughts. (And after you read them, we’d love to hear yours!)

Place responsibility for increasing social media safety where it belongs — on government regulators and social media companies. It’s all well and good to warn parents and kids about safety hazards. But social media is not a hot stove, and a simple “hands off” model of individual responsibility won’t work here. With a product as ubiquitous and addictive as social media, we need policymakers to step up and force social media companies to change their practices. So when you’re writing about social media and mental health, direct your main call to action toward the people and organizations who can reshape the industry from the top down.

Share ways for families to protect children in the meantime. While we’re pushing for change from the top, we also know that kids and teens are spending a lot of time on social media right now. When you’re communicating about youth mental health, consider mentioning how social media use might factor in. Provide practical tips for parents to keep younger kids and teens safe when they’re on these platforms. When you’re writing directly to kids and teens, help them recognize the negative feelings they may experience from social media, and encourage them to replace some of their social media time with healthier alternatives like physical activity and in-person time with family and friends.

Meet your audiences where they are… on social media. The elephant in this particular room is, of course, that the very same platforms we’re warning against are often a key part of our health comm efforts — including campaigns aimed at youth and families. But rather than fretting that your health-promoting TikToks may be part of the problem, try using the opportunity to communicate about social media safety. If the Surgeon General’s call does lead to a warning label on these platforms, health communicators need to continue that conversation and help fill the feeds that come after the warning with resources and support.

The bottom line: The Surgeon General’s warning on social media and youth mental health is a call to action that health communicators can help answer — with practical tips for kids and families, and with consistent calls for stronger safety regulations on social media platforms.

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Copy/paste to share on social (and tag us!): How can health communicators respond to the Surgeon General’s warning on social media and youth mental health? CommunicateHealth has some ideas: https://communicatehealth.com/wehearthealthliteracy/making-sense-of-the-surgeon-generals-warning-on-social-media/ #HealthCommunication #HealthLiteracy #HealthComm

Here at We ❤️ Health Literacy Headquarters, we’re always looking for new ways to center equity in health communication. And today, we want to focus on one type of equity that’s been getting some much-needed attention: pain equity.

You may have seen news recently about how our health care system often fails to treat pain in women and people of color. (Whether it’s trending in your TikTok feed via #IUD or brought to you by the makers of a well-known OTC pain reliever.) So we looked at some examples of how pain inequity affects these groups.

First up: the long history of racial pain bias. False beliefs that Black people felt less pain were once used to legitimize doing medical experiments on enslaved people without anesthesia. But even today, doctors tend to both underestimate and undertreat Black patients’ pain across the lifespan, whether treating a child with appendicitis or an older adult with terminal cancer.

For people with sickle cell disease, most of whom are Black, stigma around drug-seeking limits access to the opioids they often need to control a pain crisis. And for Black people who give birth, racism and bias in the health care system means not only a higher risk of dying in childbirth, but a lower chance of getting adequate care for postpartum pain.

That brings us to the gender pain gap. When women and other people assigned female at birth seek pain relief for periods or childbirth, they often come up against societal beliefs that this pain is inevitable. And this inequity isn’t just a pain in the uterus. Women have higher rates of chronic pain in general, but often report that doctors dismiss the severity of their pain or fail to treat it appropriately. That is, if doctors believe they’re in pain at all — see the recent case where a nurse at a fertility clinic replaced fentanyl drips with saline, and doctors ignored the dozens of women who said they felt every agonizing moment of their egg retrieval procedures.

The harms of all this untreated and disbelieved pain go far beyond the sensation itself (though that’s harmful enough!). Chronic pain causes problems with sleep, mental health, and many other parts of daily life. And when doctors don’t take acute pain seriously, it can delay diagnosis for life-threatening conditions. For example, when women and people of color go to the emergency department with chest pain, they often wait longer to get checked for a heart attack.

So what’s a health communicator to do? We may not be able to waive a magic wand and deliver equitable pain care for all. But we can help fill the gaps in pain-related health content. Try these tips:

• Validate that the pain is real. When you’re writing about a painful health condition, it can be tempting to downplay the pain part. But your audience may already feel that no one believes them. So don’t sugarcoat the situation — say clearly that the condition causes pain and explain how severe it may be.
• Offer tips for self-advocacy. Of course, the burden of advocating for equitable pain care shouldn’t fall on the people in pain. But it’s still helpful to share practical advice for how to prepare for a health care visit related to pain or for how to describe your pain to your doctor.
• Beware of implicit bias. You may be thinking, “hey, I just read a whole blog post about equity, my mind is now a bias-free paradise, pal!” But the tricky thing about this kind of bias is that it’s unconscious. So we all need to continuously examine the choices we make in creating health content — and weed out the sneaky biased bits.
• Consider how pain affects health literacy (which is, as we like to say, a state, not a trait). Remember that being in pain can negatively affect your audience’s ability to find, understand, and use health information. All the more reason to test content early and often with people who are living with pain, so they can tell you if you’re getting it right.

The bottom line: Pain equity is an important part of the health equity conversation. As health communicators, we can do our part to help everyone get the pain management care they need.

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Copy/paste to share on social (and tag us!): How can health communicators help promote equity in pain management? Try these tips from CommunicateHealth: https://communicatehealth.com/wehearthealthliteracy/bridging-the-pain-gap/ #DEI #HealthComm #HealthLiteracy

Here at We ❤️ Health Literacy Headquarters, we’re all about empowering our audiences with the information they need to make health care decisions. But information isn’t all people need to make choices — emotions have a key role to play, too. When people are facing big decisions that will affect their health and quality of life, it’s important to consider their emotional experience.

That’s where decision aids can come in! A decision aid is a tool that helps people learn about their options and weigh the risks and benefits. Decision aids can also help people process the emotions that may come with health care decisions. By communicating with empathy, we can craft decision aids that support readers’ emotional needs.

Try these tips to create empathy-centered decision aids:

Guide your audience through common emotional responses. For example, learning about a new diagnosis can bring up a wide range of emotions, from shock to anger to grief and everything in between. By naming those feelings, you can validate what people are going through and help them anticipate how they may react to new situations. Phrases like “Many people feel…” and “Some people find that…” can help to normalize strong emotions while reassuring readers they’re not alone. 

Emphasize personal agency. When people feel overwhelmed, it’s helpful to remind them that they have agency — that there are things they can control. Clearly explain the options on the table, and then remind your audience that the choice is theirs to make. For example, you could say: “[Treatment option] is a very personal decision, and there are no right or wrong answers! It’s always your decision to make, and you can move forward at your own pace.” 

Help readers identify their support needs. What do they need help with? And who has the capacity to meet those needs? For example, readers might need a ride home from the hospital, a caregiver to help with daily tasks, or a support person to join them for doctor’s appointments. In addition to these practical needs, many people find clarity in talking through their decision with a loved one. 

Speaking of loved ones, keep in mind that family isn’t one size fits all. Using inclusive language to describe families can help your decision aid feel relevant to everyone in your audience.

Help your audience find support and build community. Mental health professionals can help people build coping skills and navigate hard conversations with loved ones. Support groups provide opportunities for people to share their experience and connect with others who’ve been there. If your audience includes people with a specific health condition, consider linking to support groups focused on the condition. Depending on the topic of your decision aid, you might also highlight crisis hotlines like 988.

The bottom line: Decision aids can help people process the complex emotions that come with big health care decisions. By communicating with empathy, we can create decision aids that support our audience’s emotional needs.

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Copy/paste to share on social (and tag us!): Decision aids can help people process the complex emotions that come with big health care decisions. Create empathy-centered decision aids with these tips from CommunicateHealth: https://communicatehealth.com/wehearthealthliteracy/creating-decision-aids-with-empathy/

Last month, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an advisory declaring firearm violence in the U.S. to be a public health crisis. This important step confirms what we in the health comm space already know — it’s time to de-politicize our approach to gun violence and start treating it as a public health problem that calls for common sense solutions.

In 2022, gun violence killed over 48,000 people in the U.S. While that number is staggering, it doesn’t paint the full picture. It doesn’t do justice to the many thousands more who are injured in situations involving firearms. It says nothing about the devastation and heartbreak for those who lost a loved one — or the trauma affecting those who’ve been victims of gun violence. Nor does it capture the collective mental toll the threat of gun violence takes on pretty much all of us.

Many of us have felt powerless in the face of this epidemic. After all, health comm strategies will only go so far when we’re up against a systemic threat like gun violence that’s so deeply rooted in American society. The Surgeon General taking a stand on the issue sends a powerful message and reminds us that we have a voice — and agency to change things for the better. How do we know? Well, we’ve done it before. In an interview with NPR, Dr. Murthy names the example of smoking as a highly politicized issue. Once we reframed tobacco use as a public health issue, we were able to take meaningful action to significantly lower smoking rates.

In his advisory, the Surgeon General outlines a public health approach for lowering the risk of gun violence and unintended injury — including investing in research, promoting safe gun storage practices, and increasing access to mental health care. None of these strategies is going to magically fix gun violence in the U.S. But they are practical steps we can take toward addressing a crisis that’s taken far too many lives, for far too long. And what’s not to ❤️ about that?

Bottom line: The Surgeon General’s new advisory on firearm violence reminds us that the question of guns doesn’t have to be all or nothing — by treating gun violence as a public health issue, we make space for taking common sense steps to help lower the risk of gun violence and deaths.

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Copy/paste to share on social (and tag us!): The U.S. Surgeon General’s new advisory declares firearm violence to be a public health crisis — at CommunicateHealth, we applaud this important step. Check out this week’s post for thoughts and resources: https://bit.ly/3Y65jCy #HealthCommunication #HealthLiteracy #HealthComm

Talking about weight has never been easy. We knew that back in 2017 when we first brought you these tips for writing about weight, but the conversation feels more loaded than ever in 2024. More and more people are questioning old assumptions as we recognize the harms of medical weight bias and flawed metrics like the body mass index (BMI). Meanwhile, medicines like Ozempic are changing the conversation about obesity. How can health communicators navigate this tricky topic? While we certainly don’t have all the answers, we’ve got some ideas.

Focus on action steps, not the scale. Habits like eating a variety of healthy foods, staying physically active, and getting plenty of sleep can improve people’s health even if those habits don’t lead to weight loss. By focusing on action steps rather than weight, we can boost our audience’s self-efficacy and avoid alienating readers who dread weight loss talk. Depending on the context, it could make sense to leave weight out of the conversation altogether. If you do mention weight loss, give specific, evidence-based tips and emphasize that even a relatively small loss can have big health benefits.

If you’re recommending weight loss, give people a good reason why. Over the past few years, many people have started to think critically about the relationship between weight and health. So if you’re encouraging readers to lose weight, ditch subtle hints and make your call to action explicit. Spell out how losing weight can help your audience improve their health. Build trust by citing scientific evidence — and be honest about what experts know and don’t know.

Acknowledge the complexity of weight. Our genes, environment (hello, social determinants of health!), and behavior all have a role to play in regulating our body weight. Naming those complex factors is one step toward reducing blame and shame. Speaking of complexity, remember that everyone interprets weight messages through the lens of their own experience — which may include weight stigma, dieting, body acceptance, disordered eating, cycles of weight loss and regain, and more. So when you’re writing about weight, it’s especially important to show your audience that you see them.    

Make your guidance accessible. Consider how disability may shape your audience’s perspective on nutrition and physical activity guidance. For example, most adults have heard that they should eat more vegetables, but that advice isn’t super actionable for people who struggle with the texture of veggies because of sensory issues. Thinking beyond disability, advice on making time to work out may sound totally out of touch to a busy single parent. Taking time to learn about your audience’s needs and provide accessible suggestions — like sensory-friendly recipes or creative ways to get active with the kids — can go a long way.

Talk about what happens after weight loss. We’re all about empowering our audiences with a sense of agency. But it’s also important to be realistic about the fact that many people who lose weight will later regain it, in large part because of biological processes we can’t control. Experts are still working to find effective solutions, and time will tell how medicines like Ozempic may change the equation. In the meantime, we can strike a balance by acknowledging the challenges of weight maintenance and suggesting practical ways to try to prevent regain, like building consistent eating habits. 

The bottom line: When we’re communicating about weight, it’s especially important to lead with empathy and transparency. By meeting people where they are, we can empower them to make informed decisions about their weight and their health.

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Copy/paste to share on social (and tag us!): How can health communicators write about weight with empathy and transparency? CommunicateHealth has some ideas: https://communicatehealth.com/wehearthealthliteracy/what-to-say-about-weight/ #DEI #HealthComm #HealthLiteracy

As you know, dear readers, we occasionally highlight professional organizations that we think may interest our fellow health communicators (the Society for Health Communication is a good example). Well, get excited — because today we’ve got a great one for you.

The Public Health Communications Collaborative, or PHCC, was founded by the CDC Foundation, the de Beaumont Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, and Trust for America’s Health in 2020. The charge was both simple and not-at-all simple: Provide unbiased communication about the COVID pandemic.

We certainly don’t have to tell you that being a public health communicator at this exact moment in time can be… challenging. There’s been a profound loss of trust in public health institutions in this country, and it will take a lot of hard work and time to begin (re)building that trust. The founders of PHCC don’t want health communicators to have to figure all this out on their own. And so they started PHCC: a public health communication community dedicated to developing and sharing accurate, science-based messaging and related communication tools.

Sounds pretty great, right? Well, it is! PHCC works to develop and share actionable resources to help health communicators clearly and accurately communicate about current public health issues, build trust in the work of public health, and address harmful misinformation. If you start poking around the PHCC website, we wouldn’t be surprised if you spend much longer there than you intended. From answers to tough public health questions to timely misinfo alerts and all kinds of messaging resources — including a checklist on public health plain language and a brand new guide for creating accessible social media content on public health topics — PHCC has it all. (Oh, and educational opportunities! That too.)

So we suggest that you get to know PHCC — you can sign up for updates on the site — and keep a close eye out for new resources. We certainly will be

The bottom line: As public health communicators work to share clear and accurate public health messaging and rebuild trust in public health institutions, it’s important that we’re aligned — and that we support each other. The Public Health Communications Collaborative has entered the chat, and we ❤️ it.

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Copy/paste to share on social (and tag us!): This week, CommunicateHealth is chatting about the Public Health Communications Collaboration. If you haven’t heard about it yet, it’s a fantastic resource for #PublicHealth communicators. Learn more: https://bit.ly/3X7hvCM #HealthComm #HealthCommunication #HealthLiteracy

It’s almost June, dear readers, and you know what that means: It’s almost Pride Month, one of our very favorite times of year!

As an LGBTQ+-owned company, we remain deeply committed to equity and inclusion for LGBTQ+ people — particularly as the legislative onslaught on LGBTQ+ rights in this country continues (here’s a helpful if depressing map of said attacks). And as public health communicators, we remain deeply committed to creating health communications that help our LGBTQ+ audiences feel seen, respected, and included.

It’s that commitment that led us to release our Inclusive Language Playbook: Writing for LGBTQ+ Communities last year (this post has a quick description of the playbook). If you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, this resource features tips and considerations for writing about and for LGBTQ+ audiences — from in-depth discussions on tricky topics to a table full of recommended language swaps.

As we’ve said before, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to writing about LGBTQ+ people — but we hope this is a good starting point to help health communicators make very intentional language choices in this space. So check it out and share it with your networks! Then you can discuss things like gender-conscious language with your colleagues — or helpfully remind a family member that there’s nothing “preferred” about people’s pronouns. (Special shout-out to the CommunicateHealth LGBTQ+ employee resource group members for their valuable contributions to the playbook.)

It’s also the perfect time to learn about some LGBTQ+ public health heroes from history (we had a great time researching and writing that one!) and to check out a Pride-appropriate documentary (like Disclosure) or TV show (Sex Education, perhaps?). However you celebrate, dear readers, we wish you the happiest Pride — may you have a wonderful month of supporting LGBTQ+ rights, elevating LGBTQ+ voices, and celebrating queer joy.

The bottom line: Happy Pride! We hope yours is filled with inclusive and respectful language choices, support for LGBTQ+ equity and inclusion, and celebration of queer joy.

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Copy/paste to share on social (and tag us!): Happy (almost) #PrideMonth! This week, CommunicateHealth revisits the LGBTQ+ #InclusiveLanguage Playbook: https://communicatehealth.com/wehearthealthliteracy/happy-pride-to-all/ #HealthComm #HealthCommunication #HealthLiteracy

Today we’re returning to the We ❤️ Health Literacy Book Club to highlight a novel that’s set against the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s: The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai. The book not only chronicles the early days of one of the biggest public health crises of modern times but also illustrates how the effects of trauma can span decades.

The Great Believers is told from the perspectives of 2 characters: Yale Tishman, a development director for an art gallery in 1980s Chicago, and Fiona Marcus, a woman searching for her estranged daughter in Paris 3 decades later. Yale is working on a major acquisition for the gallery. Had circumstances been different, it might have been a thrilling time in his life. But outside of work, he’s watching friend after friend suffer and die, and he’s experiencing never-ending grief — not to mention anger, confusion, and survivor’s guilt.

Fiona, a minor character in the 1980s chapters, loses her brother (and many friends) to AIDS. Fast-forward to 2015 and she’s facing a different kind of loss: Her adult daughter seemingly wants nothing to do with her. It’s clear that Fiona has carried her grief and trauma through the decades, which has harmed many of her relationships along the way.

No doubt, The Great Believers is a gripping, heart-wrenching story — and it just so happens to be full of health comm takeaways. Here are a few:

• Clear and accessible health information is critical. As the novel illustrates, there was a lot that the medical and public health communities didn’t know during the early days of the AIDS epidemic. This, combined with rampant stigma, allowed misinformation to flourish. The result was that people were (understandably) confused about their risk and how to protect themselves. This demonstrates why it’s so important for health communicators to clearly explain what we know — and what we don’t — no matter the topic. When we do this, we help build trust and make sure our audiences can make informed decisions to protect their health.
• Empathy is powerful. The novel’s gay characters face serious discrimination — including in the health care system. But when people treat them with empathy and respect, it goes a long way toward helping them get important health services. For example, Fiona connects Yale to a doctor who know how he’s feeling, treats him with compassion, and understands the need to protect his privacy — and Yale decides to get tested. We can’t stress the importance of empathy enough!
• Trusted messengers can make a big difference. We don’t have to tell you that health messages are more likely to resonate with our audience if those messages are coming from someone the audience knows and trusts. Yale’s partner Charlie is the publisher of a newspaper for LGBTQ+ audiences, and he’s serious about educating readers about protective behaviors like condom use. In our own work, we can look to people and organizations that already have connections with our audiences for help communicating and sharing our health materials.

The bottom line: The Great Believers is a powerful story that chronicles the devastating effects of the AIDS epidemic through the decades — and it offers some important health comm takeaways.

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Copy/paste to share on social (and tag us!): This week, CommunicateHealth chats about Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers, set against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis. Besides being a great read, this novel includes valuable #HealthComm lessons: https://bit.ly/3WJtAOo #HealthLiteracy

Here at We ❤️ Health Literacy Headquarters, we simply can’t get enough of practical, actionable resources for health communicators. So this week, we wanted to tell you about a relatively new resource to hit the health comm scene: the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security’s Practical playbook for addressing health misinformation.

The need to address health misinformation (and its friend disinformation) is one of the most significant communication legacies of the COVID pandemic. Of course, misinformation  isn’t a new concept, but there’s no denying that health communicators are grappling with misinfo-related issues more often than we did in the beforetimes. This rise in mis/disinfo has sparked posts from us on strategies for debunking harmful health myths — like the trusty truth sandwich or prebunking.

So you can imagine our delight when we came across this playbook, all about dealing with misinformation! This comprehensive resource, which builds on CDC’s  lays out a phased approach to preventing the spread of misinformation:

• Prework: Actions to take before rumors arise
• Step 1: Decide whether to address the rumor
• Step 2: Take action to address misinformation
• Step 3: Evaluate anti-misinformation messages

And it features lots of great stuff: a checklist that breaks down all the key phases and strategies, a message development guide, a truth sandwich worksheet. What else do we really need to say to sell this to you, dear readers?!

If you want to learn more about the playbook, check out the news release from its launch back in February. We hope you’ll check it out and share with your networks!

The bottom line: Check out the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security’s new playbook — it’s all about addressing misinformation, and that’s an important part of our work as health communicators.

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Copy/paste to share on social (and tag us!): Helpful #HealthComm resource alert! 🚨 This week, CommunicateHealth is chatting about the #misinformation playbook from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security: https://bit.ly/3Us2NTK #HealthCommunication #HealthLiteracy

You won’t be surprised to hear that we’ve been keeping a close eye on the news about the outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza — better known as bird flu — among dairy cows in the United States. First reported at the end of March, this outbreak has affected more than 30 cattle herds and led to 1 (very mild) human case of bird flu. So this week, we’ve rounded up a few stories to help us all stay in the loop. Read on, dear readers!

• Could Bird Flu Cause a Human Pandemic? (Vox)
  We really like the framing of this piece, which lays out what’s worrying scientists about the outbreak and what’s not. It drills down into the big questions — and at this point, we still have a lot of them. The author, a former CDC disease detective, closes the piece with these encouraging words: “At the moment, there are more ‘coulds’ than ‘ares’ with H5N1: Although the virus is showing that it could adapt further to spread among humans, so far it hasn’t; and while it’s reasonable to conduct studies to ensure pasteurization works against this particular strain of H5N1, there’s no reason to think it won’t.”
• Pasteurization Inactivates H5N1 Bird Flu in Milk, New FDA and Academic Studies Confirm (STAT)
  Speaking of studies to ensure pasteurization works against H5N1, findings from them are rolling in in real time — and the news is positive. This piece, out just today, notes that additional testing on pasteurized dairy products from 38 states showed zero evidence of live virus. These studies “add weight to the FDA’s conclusion that pasteurized milk products are safe for consumption despite a widespread outbreak of cows infected with H5N1.” We’ll take it!
• Spikes of Flu Virus in Wastewater Raise Questions About Spread of Bird Flu (CNN)
  Not too long ago, we wrote about wastewater surveillance in the context of COVID. So this piece — about spikes of influenza A viruses in wastewater across 18 states and what that might mean for the spread of bird flu in dairy cattle — caught our eye. The article details a new study conducted by a team of scientists who say wastewater surveillance could provide early warnings of bird flu outbreaks in farm animals. Interesting stuff.
• Opinion: This May Be Our Last Chance to Halt Bird Flu in Humans, and We Are Blowing It (New York Times)
  In this opinion piece, Zeynep Tufekci, a sociology and public affairs professor at Princeton University, argues that we’re falling short in terms of preventing bird flu from spreading in humans. She calls out issues with both animal farming practices and public health approaches — and asserts that we’re ignoring valuable communication lessons from the COVID pandemic. “One troubling legacy of the coronavirus pandemic is that there was too much attention on telling the public how to feel — to panic or not panic — rather than sharing facts and inspiring confidence through transparency and competence. And four years later we have an added layer of polarization and distrust to work around.”

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Copy/paste to share on social (and tag us!): In this edition of #HealthComm Headlines, CommunicateHealth is rounding up some helpful reading material on the #BirdFlu outbreak in U.S. dairy cattle. Take a look: https://bit.ly/3WpcEwl #PublicHealth #H5N1