health literacy in communications.
health literacy in communications.
Week 6: communications, Marketing & Public Relations
Week 6: Health Literacy and Marketing
1. To realize a person-centered health care system, the ACA and the HITECH Act, two federal laws, promote new health care service delivery models and health information technologies that emphasize teams and people’s engagement in information seeking, decision making, and self-management. These changes reflect the growing priority of health literacy.
—Koh, Baur, Brach, Harris, & Rowden (2013, p. 1).
As a health care administrator, you might be responsible for ensuring that communications from your agency and materials developed by your agency adhere to best practices on health literacy. Understanding the health literacy needs of your target audience or community will influence the approaches you might take to ensure that information is clearly articulated and effectively understood. While health literacy may present a definite challenge for health care administrators to address, understanding how to promote effective health literacy is essential to an agency’s visibility and commitment toward fulfilling the health service needs of their target population.
This week, you examine health care administrator consequences for health literacy in communications. You explore the importance of health literacy in influencing services for health care delivery and consider the health literacy of target audiences. You also examine strategies health care administrators might implement to tailor health communications based on differing levels of health literacy for target audiences.
Learning Objectives
Students will:
· Analyze consequences for health care administrators in relation to health literacy in communications
· Analyze health literacy in influencing services and programs for health care delivery
· Analyze implementation of health care administrator solutions
· Analyze health literacy of target audience
· Evaluate strategies to tailor messages for target audience
Learning Resources
Note: To access this week’s required library resources, please click on the link to the Course Readings List, found in the Course Materials section of your Syllabus.
Required Readings
· Parker, J. C., & Thorson, E. (Eds.). (2009). Health communication in the new media landscape. New York, NY: Springer.
Chapter 1, “The challenge of Health care and Disability” (pp.3-19)
Chapter 11, “Health Literacy in the Digital World” (pp. 303–320)
· Heinrich, C. (2012). Health literacy: The sixth vital sign. Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners, 24(4), 218–223. Note: Retrieved from Walden Library databases.
· Jibaja-Weiss, M. L., Volk, R. J., Granchi, T. S., Neff, N. E., Robinson, E. K., Spann, S. J., … Beck, J. R. (2011). Entertainment education for breast cancer surgery decisions: A randomized trail among patients with low health literacy. Patient Education and Counseling, 84(1), 41–48. Note: Retrieved from Walden Library databases.
· Zoellner, J., You, W., Connell, C., Smith-Ray, R. L., Allen, K., Tucker, K. L., … Estabrooks, P. (2011). Health literacy is associated with healthy eating index scores and sugar-sweetened beverage intake: Findings from the rural lower Mississippi delta. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 111(7), 1012–1020. Note: Retrieved from Walden Library databases.
Required Media
