DD7HW2 Chapter 9, Article #1

Article Title:  Picture This: Visual Cues Enhance Health Education Messages for People with Low Literacy Skills

Informative Abstract (Summary):
Using visuals on nutritional health information can help people understand the written information more easily, especially people with low literacy skills. This is important because nutritional health professionals want to build a rapport with their clients and assist them with making healthy behavioral changes. 

Health information is often lengthy and wordy, and can become confusing for readers with low literacy skills. Foremost, when constructing visuals, start with a clear main message then review the written text to see if reducing the text will still allow the reader to understand the content. The type of visual (photograph or drawing) is not as important as the appropriateness of the visual and how it portrays the desired health message. 

When designing nutritional health media with text and visuals, the following considerations are recommended:  

• Use simple drawings with few distracting details.
• Manage visual space on a wed-based format to facilitate reading. 
• Use sans serif fonts (Arial or Century Gothic) for electronic messages. 
• Use serif font (TImes New Roman) for printed messages. 
• Avoid using all capital letters. 
• When using bullets, start a sentence with a capital letter and end with a period. 
• Consider cultural relevance of images. 
• Include people from your target audience in creating these health messages. 

Best practices for communicating nutritional health messages include various distribution formats, such as web-sites, video self-modeling, text messaging and general uses of smartphones. Nutritional health messaging can be a powerful educational tool, but only if it is clear and easy to understand, allowing clients to feel comfortable enough to make decisions about their health.


Descriptive Abstract:
Educational materials with visuals can aid in comprehension of nutritional health information for people with low literacy skills. Visual cues and messaging are identified and recommendations are made for making both printed and electronic formats easy to navigate. The better understanding people have of educational material, the more likely they are to incorporate the information into their lives and make healthy nutritional decisions about their health.


Citation:

Peregrin, Tony.  Picture this: visual cues enhance health education messages for people with low literacy skills.  Journal of the American Dietetic Association 110.4. 2010; 500-505.