Effective Ways to Improve Health Education Materials

This article describes methods for preparing more effective health education materials. These methods are drawn primarily from advertising copywriting, the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion, and literacy research. These methods are not well known by many health educators and are not commonly applied in written health education materials available today. Highlights of these techniques include offering benefits desired by the audience in the title; putting key information in subheadings and highlighted text; emphasizing actions and benefits; using familiar information and terminology; organizing the information to improve recall of key points; and using pictures to improve communication, persuasiveness, and memorability of the message. These techniques can increase the chances that the audience will notice, read, comprehend, accept, and remember the written health messages. Probably one of the more important recommendations derived from literacy research and advertising copywriting is making the key points of the text easy for the reader to find. Health educators can achieve the full communication potential of written materials with the skilled use of these techniques.