Amplifying patient education through intentional diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) – Wolters Kluwer

In the digital healthcare space, there can be so much information that it can be hard for patients to know what to trust. Better representing patients through diversity in healthcare education has been shown to help cut through that skepticism and improve health literacy.

According to the National Library of Medicine, there are some 80 million U.S. adults with low health literacy, and the U.S. Department of Educations Health Literacy Report found that 65% of those come from Black, Hispanic, or other underrepresented communities.

Simply providing health education to patients doesnt solve this issue of inequality of health literacy. Educational materials whether printed or multimedia need to be created with an intentional effort toward health diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I). Materials that reflect a broad range of patients and patient experiences including races/ethnicities, ages, genders, sexual orientations, family structures, abilities, and socioeconomic statuses have been shown to:

One simple way to think of DE&I is to use the metaphor of a party. With the patient as your potential party guest, each layer of intentional representation and involvement takes them further from outsider to warmly welcomed center of attention:

Think of this step as being invited to the party and seeing people you recognize already there. Some patients have never seen anyone who looks like them in healthcare educational resources. We can start by celebrating our patient populations differences and representing as broad and varied a sampling of them as possible.

Next, we have to make space for our guests to enjoy themselves however they wish at the party providing opportunities for people to dance, play games, and quiet space to talk, depending on their preferences. It isnt enough to have diverse representation in your content, you need to deliver that content effectively to all patients and consumers regardless of potential limitations to access they may encounter.

In the final phase, your guest has to be given a chance to express themselves; for example, selecting their own songs for the party playlist. Educational materials need to be personalized and actionable enough to be practical and actually used by patients.

As part of the design team behind Wolters Kluwers Emmi patient engagement solutions, Ive experienced first-hand the challenges of creating more diverse representation in patient-facing materials. Our EmmiEducate patient education offering features more than 8,000 leaflets and nearly 300 videos to help consumers understand anatomy, medications, procedures, and conditions. It would be impossible to customize that much material to precisely reflect the wide variety of experiences of all the patients and members who might use them.

The best answer we have found is to consciously work toward the broadest variety of experiences and perspectives so that the materials do not become repetitive visually and the storytelling is richer and more medically accurate.

The ways we do this include:

In order to create greater equity among patients, we always say we need to make healthcare education more accessible. That is a two-prong effort:

Modern healthcare education is largely delivered in digital formats, which creates a variety of ways to improve experiences and equity across patient populations:

The philosophy is not just to make content access better for those with varying abilities, but to simplify and improve the patient education experience for the entire patient population overall.

The same applies to how the content is designed to be consumed and understood. Following Agency for Healthcare and Research Quality guidelines helps serve as a roadmap to make complex clinical information clearer for patients and members. To improve health literacy, best practices include:

Patients and members tend to feel more empowered to take an active role in making their healthcare decisions when they feel engaged and included. Patient education can play a large role in helping them see themselves in the decision-making process by broadening inclusive representation. For example:

Patient depictions in artwork can be non-gender-specific when warranted by using silhouettes or partial figures. This would be appropriate when discussing cervical cancer. For example, instead of showing a womans figure, use a partial figure in order to be inclusive of transgender or non-binary audiences who are also affected by the disease.

Patient education often recommends exercise or movement. Depicting that as a young or fit person running around the block doesnt recognize the varying physical abilities of many patients. The materials should also offer tips and options of different levels of activity, so patients can self-select what they are comfortable with.

Healthcare educational materials should offer practical advice and be sensitive to the range of economic realities patients or members may face. For example, instead of simply instructing members to set up a telehealth appointment, materials might first remind them to connect to Wi-Fi to avoid data usage costs.

Ultimately the content within patient education needs to not only make people feel represented but give them clear actions they can take as the next steps in their health journey.

Learn more about EmmiEducatemultimedia patient education solution.

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Amplifying patient education through intentional diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) - Wolters Kluwer