Return-Path: <nifl-health@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id i59E5n914108; Wed, 9 Jun 2004 10:05:49 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 10:05:49 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <A31C5F66-BA1D-11D8-A19A-00039381D39E@comcast.net> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-health@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-health@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-health@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: David Rosen <djrosen@comcast.net> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-health@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-HEALTH:4449] Re: Which Test? X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.553) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Status: O Content-Length: 3302 Lines: 76 Hello Siobhan, and others, On Wednesday, June 9, 2004, at 08:52 AM, Siobhan Blackwell wrote: > Now, my question is, what else can a health care provider use to > determne if > a person can read the literature s/he is being given, or understand > what is > written on the medicine. Here are some possibilities: Medicine: The pharmacist could ask if the patient would like the label printed on a separate piece of paper in large type (which would benefit a wide range of people, me included) or if the patient would like the pharmacist to go over the directions (slowly). If there were a telephone service provided by the healthcare institution where the directions for a prescription could be linked to the prescription number that might help, particularly if the directions for how to access that phone number, and the telephone tree directions were simple. In any case, these -- and other solutions -- should be tested out on a focus group of adult learners. Archie Willard and other adult learners in Iowa have been part of focus groups which the Secretary of State there convened to learn about what state ballot language changes might help adult learners. The health field should routinely solicit the advice of adult learners in developing health promotion materials. Literature There are many good examples of easy-to-read health promotion literature, some written by adult learners, ( e.g. see http://www.sabes.org/health/brochure.htm ) but literature in plain English should only be one of several solutions to providing information. For those who want to know how to tell what "grade level" print materials are written on, Micro Power and Light has a software package for a little over $100 that uses nine of the best American English readability formulae. lt offers two wonderful features: 1) you type in the text and it calculates the reading level -- easy and quick; and 2) it gives you an average across the nine formulae (or any subset of the nine) because no single readability formula is completely accurate. The average, I have found, is generally more useful than a grade level from any single readability calculation formula. Having said that, what do you have when you have a "grade level;" of a reading passage for an adult? At best, a general description of the reading difficulty, to be taken into consideration with other factors such as motivation, and background knowledge in the subject matter or topic. Micro Power and Light's Web page is http://www.micropowerandlight.com/ For making sure health information is not only accessible but understood person-to-person is best, but telephone, Web page and dvd information are possibly helpful. Regularly updated information from Web pages could be custom-burnt on CD's or DVD's for individual patients-- it's now quick and inexpensive to burn a dvd, and dvd players are cheap and widely accessible. The information burnt from the Web page to the dvd could include illustrations and video. health care web page designers could design -- and update -- web pages so that they would be easy to customize and burn. Health care institutions could loan dvd players if necessary. Is this being done already? If not, why not? David J. Rosen djrosen@comcast.net
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