Simplifying!
Last week I read the always informative NYT article on antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" through the lens of -
how does a low health literate person make meaning from this. I call
this doing a Health
Literacy Load Analysis - Identify the underlying concepts that the
text/message assumes the reader has some working knowledge of. And then I work on what
a good rewrite for low health literacy readers should look like.
Here are the First 3 Paragraphs: [12th grade Flesch Kincaid performed on a Mac]
¶ 1 Government
officials, drug companies and medical experts, faced with outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant
“superbugs,” are pushing to speed up the approval of new antibiotics, a
move that is raising safety concerns among some critics.
¶ 2 The need for
new antibiotics is so urgent, supporters of an overhaul say, that lengthy studies
involving hundreds or thousands of patients should be waived in favor of directly
testing such drugs in very sick patients. Influential lawmakers have said
they are prepared to support legislation that allows for faster testing.
¶ 3 The Health and
Human Services Department last month announced an agreement under which it
will pay $40 million to a major drug maker, GlaxoSmithKline, to help it develop
medications to combat antibiotic resistance and biological agents that
terrorists might use. Under the plan, the federal government could give the
drug company as much as $200 million over the next five years.
Health Literacy Load Analysis of paragraph 1.
¶ 1 –
1. Function of antibiotics: Antibiotics
are medicines that treat infections (
not viral infections)
2. Antibiotic Resistance: Some antibiotics
don’t work any more because there are new, different, strong infections.
3. Superbugs: Some of the new infections
that don't go away anymore with regular antibiotics are called “superbugs”. They are not real bugs. We call them super
bugs because they are stronger than the antibiotics. This means it is very hard or sometimes
impossible to cure these infections.
4. Governmental Oversight/Public Safety: The
government has to approve new drugs. It must make sure that all new drugs are
safe for people and work the way they are supposed to. It can take a very long time for companies to
develop new drugs and a long time for the government to approve new drugs.
Now what?
How do we revise this information for low health literate readers without losing all the substance?
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