Illustrations as a Tool To Improve Health Literacy in Countries With English as a Second Language

Abstract

Health communication involves communicating information about health for promotional purposes. The health information is disseminated with the intention to influence choices and improve health literacy. High health literacy can help patients in making the right choices and taking the decisions appropriate to their health condition. Health literacy involves a number of aspects how patients receive, interpret and act on the information regarding health issues. Health literacy is generally associated to functional literacy, where an individual’s capacity to act appropriately in a situation is important. There is an abundance of information related to health, available to the consumers; lower literacy whereas leads to confusion and misconceptions. This paper proposes a way to overcome the problem, by using illustrations in health information. Visual presentation facilitates comprehension; therefore, illustrations can prove beneficial to people with low health literacy. To check the effectiveness of illustrations in improving health literacy, an experiment is conducted with two groups of people varying in education and age. The test helps to estimate the extent to which illustrations prove instrumental for improving health literacy, specifically among people who are not native English speakers. The difficulty level for understanding health information increases for people with English as second language, as most of the material on health information, whether in print or on the web is mainly in English language. Results however show that illustrations do not play a significant role in improving health literacy to a greater extent.