This short course is designed to teach participants a step-by-step approach to designing patient materials and educational initiatives that effectively communicate concepts at a level appropriate for their audiences.

Patient literacy (or health literacy) is certainly not a new topic, yet isn’t getting its much-deserved attention these days. Materials developed for patient communications or education often miss the mark. The application of literacy and numeracy principles is now more critical than ever, due to the increased tendency of patients to seek out disease state and treatment-related information on their own.

In this interactive short course, participants will learn principles of patient literacy, receive a number of tools to assist them in developing their own patient-literate materials, and learn about excellent resources that can be used to help them continue to develop their skills in this area.

Interactive exercises will provide opportunities to practice these skills. This will include evaluating existing materials, editing to improve literacy, and development of new materials. We will address both written and oral communication.

Finally, an active discussion will provide strategies on how participants can work to encourage a culture of patient literacy within their own organizations, becoming champions of this approach and bringing about true cultural change.

An additional registration fee is required for all preconference short courses.

Back to DIA 2019 Short Courses