Crowdpower in the era of ‘health 2.0’ - Volume 21, Issue

Members of the social web are increasingly banding together and using web 2.0 technologies to actively participate in their own healthcare (‘health 2.0’). This article gives an overview of how ‘crowdpower’ is impacting the field of healthcare, above…

Patient education accessibility - Volume 24, Issue

Patient education that overcomes literacy barriers supports quality care. This article provides an overview of health literacy, describes the concepts of readability and accessibility, and discusses how to empathise with the patient's experience and…

Profile: An interview with Blanca Mayor Serrano on the state-of-the-art of health literacy in Spain - Volume 22, Issue

There seems to be a move towards ‘patient-centred’ health care as part of an overall effort to improve the quality of health care and to reduce costs. Individual patients and providers have to work together to ensure effective communication.…

How CDC is promoting a clear communication culture - Volume 24, Issue

Both the federal Plain Writing Act and the mission of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to protect and promote people's health require CDC to communicate clearly so that people can understand and act on the important health…

Writing for lay audiences: A challenge for scientists - Volume 24, Issue

Writing for lay audiences, especially lay summaries, is needed to increase health and science literacy, but this kind of writing can be difficult for scientists. The article describes why it can be so difficult and gives some advice on how…

In the Bookstores - Volume 27, Issue

Health Literacy FromA to Z: Practical ways to communicate your health message (Second Edition) By Helen Osborne, M.Ed., OTR/L

Writing for lay audiences - Volume 24, Issue

For most of us, medical writing is highly technical. We prepare regulatory or clinical documents or write materials targeted to medical doctors. Medical writing for lay audiences is different, and it does not come naturally to most of us because…

In the Bookstores - Volume 22, Issue

The Spirit Level

Ever had a ‘ping’ moment? This book might have been mine. I'm not a natural pessimist, but Western society today seems less cohesive and people more materialistic, stressed, unhealthy, and unhappy than in times gone by. Wealth and s…

What do writers need to know about user testing? - Volume 24, Issue

Increasing amounts of information are being made available to patients – but how do we know if we are getting it right and meeting people's needs? In this article, we describe how we have employed user testing to test and improve not just…