Reflecting on health equity and communication

2021 was another interesting year, and I am glad we got through it together. As President of Health Communication Partners, I’m taking this time to reflect on, and recap, the resources we have provided this year to help inform and support your equity work as health professionals.

Health Communication Partners provides health communication consulting in several forms, including capacity building, program evaluation, and research support. There are hundreds of exclusive, original resources on health communication, patient education and health literacy waiting for you at H-CPartners.com

Podcast Series

2021 started with HCP putting health equity front and center in 2021. Everything on the HCP site and podcast series has always shared this commitment to equity and justice. I explain how this commitment underlies our podcast series in an article for the Journal of Consumer Health on the Internet, and dig deeper into what makes our show unique as we celebrated 100 episodes! For our show’s 4th anniversary, we debuted a new occasional feature, “Busting some literacy myths”

More people than ever supported our self-funded podcast series! Some people did this by taking action toward reducing bias in their own everyday conversations, and some learned how to improve their medical metaphors. Others learned how to practice more equitable patient education. 

In our first episode and interview of 2021, Dr. Jonas Attilus spoke with me about humility and power in patient communication. His is a specific starting position: “I feel like it’s normal for people to mistrust us.” In the Spring, Dr. Lachelle Dawn Weeks visited the show to discuss wholeness and physician communication. She shared, “I think a lot about equity and about how Physicians can better communicate about issues of racial justice and injustices, and how to be better advocates within the hospital and exam room spaces for our patients from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.” Dr. Paul Ranelli (who retires next week! Congratulations Dr. Ranelli!) came back to our show to explain how he encourages his students to see patients as experts: “We may be experts in our clinical and drug knowledge with all the schooling that we get. But that patient is an expert in their life.”

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Policy

2021 was a busy policy year. We saw the US House Ways & Means Committee release a new Equity Framework. The Biden Administration invested $250 Million as health literacy grants, and I suggested one way these grants might advance equitable communication. And President Biden issued the Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity, and I shared one idea about an action any of us–including federal agencies–can take.

Vaccine Communication

HCP can assist your organization with culturally-specific vaccine campaigns to help the unvaccinated get vaccinated. I shared some lessons learned about targeted vaccine communication, We revisited patient misconceptions, and created reflective prompts if you are working on vaccine communication. Employers are having to communicate about health topics more than ever before. So HCP shared ways employers can improve their communication about RTO and about Omicron.

Research

In 2021, I’ve heard people asking excellent questions about the future of research in health and healthcare, specifically regarding health equity. I addressed some of the research challenges that we face as we integrate knowledge across disciplines. At my  keynote address to the Southeast Health Literacy Conference, I considered some of the research challenges facing the field of health literacy specifically.

Communication and health disparities

Of course we have continued our central focus: to explore the role communication plays in health disparities, at individual and systemic levels. Health professionals are increasingly aware that how we write and speak affects Health Equity, whether in health literacy,  patient education, or digital health. I spoke about equity-oriented patient/clinician communication as a guest on “Social Medicine on Air”.

On the systemic level, this year HCP has offered you (at least) six reasons we should care what ‘health equity’ means, ways to support more equitable interprofessional communication, and some encouraging actions at the intersection of communication and health equity.

Take care of yourself

This is a marathon, so taking it easy on ourselves is essential. Here’s 5 reasons to take a break. Making sustainable changes means we’re also collaborating, so here’s 4 hints to help things go smoothly. And for all the educators, I offered 7 Ways to be good to yourself (and your students) this Academic Year.

It’s been an honor to support the work you do in the world. If your organization needs expert help on any topic you see here, just fill in the form below. And Happy 2022 to us all!