Stacy Robison MPH, CHES is co-founder of CommunicateHealth — a consulting company based in Northampton, Massachusetts. As a certified health educator, Stacy uses plain language to meet the learning needs of audiences with limited health literacy skills.

For the past three years, Stacy has been writing and designing health content for Quick Guide to Healthy Living — part of the award-winning healthfinder.gov Web site from the U.S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. This site has been tested and developed with close to 800 Web users, most of whom have limited health literacy skills.

In this podcast, Stacy Robison talks with Helen Osborne about:

• How people with limited literacy skills, health literacy skills, or limited time use online health information.
• What is different when communicating about wellness and prevention (health promotion) v. communicating about diagnosis and treatment (health care).
• Ways to design health content so that Web users can, and will, take action.

More ways to learn:

• CommunicateHealth, at www.communicatehealth.com. You can email Stacy Robison at stacy@communicatehealth.com
• Health Literacy Online, from ODPHP (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, available at http://www.health.gov/healthliteracyonline
• Quick Guide to Healthy Living, at www.healthfinder.gov/prevention.
• Health Literacy Out Loud Podcast #19: “Communicating Clearly on the Web.” An audio interview with Ginny Redish, at http://www.healthliteracyoutloud.com/2009/08/03/hlol-19-communicating-clearly-on-the-web/
• “Health Literacy Online: Building an Easy-To-Use Health Information Web Site,” a Health Literacy Month story posted October 20, 2009. At http://healthliteracymonth.org/hlm_article.asp?PageID=9167
• Osborne, H. “In other words…What Makes Web Sites Patient-Friendly? On Call magazine, July 2005. At http://healthliteracy.com/article.asp?PageID=3803

Click here to read a transcript of this episode: (more…)

Lee Aase is manager of Syndication and Social Media for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. There, he works with a team to develop medical news for the mainstream media. He also uses social media to create in-depth and extended relationships with key stakeholders.

When not working at his “day job,” Lee is the Chancellor of Social Media University Global (SMUG) — a free online resource he created to provide practical, hands-on training in social media for lifelong learners. In all situations, Lee makes it his personal mission is to help people get comfortable with social media.

In this podcast, Lee Aase talks with Helen Osborne about:

• “Social media pyramid” of: Twitter and micro-blogs; Facebook and other networking sites; Web audio (podcasts) and video (YouTube); Blogs.
• How newcomers can get started and why they should.
• Examples of using social media to communicate about health.

Ways to learn more:

• You can email Lee Aase directly at Aase.lee@mayo.edu
• Mayo Clinic News Blog at http://newsblog.mayoclinic.org/
• Sharing Mayo Clinic, http://sharing.mayoclinic.org/
• SMUG at http://social-media-university-global.org
• Osborne, H. “In Other Words…Using Text Messages to Improve Medication Adherence,” http://healthliteracy.com/article.asp?PageID=7987
• Follow Lee and Helen on www.Twitter.com : @LeeAase, @HelenOsborne, and @HealthLitMonth.