NIHR: Health information: are you getting your message across? (2)

8 July, 2022

[Re: https://www.hifa.org/dgroups-rss/nihr-health-information-are-you-getting... ]

The NIH Collection certainly would be a brilliant resource but mainly for its target audience - for patient populations whose reading skills are described to be "below average".

Yet the question, "are you getting your message across?" especially in our complex globally nuanced times, cannot be answered merely within elimination of low literacy especially when the goal is to achieve awareness of basic health information. Awareness raising depends largely on non formal education approaches, which focuses on information sharing with all stakeholders through public events and community meetings and through audio-visual media like the radio, TV commercials, video /documentary films etc. In fact the Community Development programs have been catalysing these "sensitization" learning methods for a long time!

Finally, in planning to "get a message across" especially among adults, one has to consider not only the capabilities of the "learner: but more critically, the appropriate medium for adult learning and variations in behaviour and motivation and social contexts of typical populations one wants to reach.

Esha Ray Chaudhuri

Canada

HIFA profile: Esha Ray Chaudhuri is an Equity Analyst, in Canada. Professional interests: Equity Issues in Health and Health Care with particular focus on interface of Local and Global contexts. She is a member of two HIFA working groups: HIFA SUPPORT-SYSTEMS - How can decision-making processes for health systems strengthening and universal health coverage be made more inclusive, responsive and accountable? and the WHO-HIFA Catalyst Group on Learning for quality health services. https://www.hifa.org/support/members/esha-ray

https://www.hifa.org/projects/new-support-systems-how-can-decision-makin...

https://www.hifa.org/projects/learning-quality-health-services Email address: ed.consult3 AT gmail.com