Explaining COVID: Try This...Not This

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Many thanks again to the participants some from as far away as Carla White and Susan Reid from Health Literacy New Zealand, who participated in my recent Soundbite Series: Covid and Health Literacy 

One thing that came out of those exchanges of materials and ideas is that it would be productive to share and discuss some examples of revised messages/materials. Rewrites that are very focused on how to make the text more readable and usable by the general public. 

As we discussed in the numeracy seminar, there is much research to show that adults (in the US and elsewhere) struggle with basic calculations and visual representations of numbers.  And yet with COVID these precise things are everywhere: rates of spread, rates of death, percentages, and all types of data visualizations – charts, numerical graphs, logarithmic graphs, animated scattergrams, and GIS map.   

So how about a literal title for these posts! 

   INSTEAD OF THIS...TRY THIS  

(suggested with all due respect to the folks who worked on the original messages)

Example 1: taken from the comprehensive and constantly updated 
NYC “Daily Counts” segment on the NYC COVID-19:DATA  https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page

HINT Dear Reader...focus on the differences in the before and after introductions to the graph.

INSTEAD OF THIS - (original language on the site)

“Daily Counts

This chart shows the number of confirmed cases by diagnosis date, hospitalizations by admission date and deaths by date of death from COVID-19 on a daily basis since February 29. Due to delays in reporting, which can take as long as a week, recent data are incomplete.”

TRY THIS - rewrite

This chart shows you 3 different types of data: 1) Number of cases of COVID by date, 2) Number of hospitalizations by date, and 3) number of deaths every day since February 29. You can use your pointer to move over the dates.

 --------------------

Why THIS?

• Reading and comprehension are improved if you use a good intro - what linguists call a "superordinate pre-statement".  It tells the reader to "get ready to read about x."  
• The original intro (pre-statement) is one longer compound sentence and it's easy for the reader to get confused about what counts are going to be displayed. 
• numbering ( or creating some type of visual list of content) generally makes the text easier and quicker to read. 
• And if a reader (me) skips over the intro and goes straight to the graph but gets lost, the rewritten intro is easier to refer back to. 

How'm I doing? 

Anyone have some other ideas? 

On Receiving Doak Health Literacy Award

When Health Literacy Media informed me that I would be receiving this year's Cecilia and Leonard Doak Health Literacy Champion Award, my first thought came in the form of a long ago memory - an image of listening to Ceci Doak sensitively speak about the lives of individuals who struggle to read and understand the complexity around them.


My second thought image was of me as a young linguistic graduate student tasked with being the moderator of a semiotics talk at Brown.  The speaker and I engaged in this rarefied ( OK, you're right,  obtuse) exploration of how humans interpret words both syntagmatically and paradigmatically - and wow wasn't that infinitely fascinating.  I remember the large, patient audience chuckled when we were done.

I was helping out at the conference with my then fellow student and now life-long best friend Debbie Topol.  The conference was the inspired product of my mentor, Dr. Peter Blackwell, then Principal of the RI School for the Deaf and the Co-Director of The Language Awareness Project at Brown, along with Dr. Naomi Baron.

After our session Deb and I trudged off to make sure that the coffee and donuts were readied for the break ( sound familiar). On the way I'm sure the small talk was our familiar riff - what's the connection between all this complex theory, all this stuff we're learning and thinking through - and the language acquisition  and literacy problems of deaf young people we're teaching.  (The fundamental literacy level achieved by deaf adults is far poorer than the general population and many struggle to read at 5th grade level).

It's 40 something years later and a true surprise and honor (a gift indeed)  of learning that I am receiving the Doak award is that it came at a moment when the question of how to connect theory and practice has been pricking my conscience more than usual. I've been writing about perception and action in complex emergencies.  Where's the theory in the practice?  Is there new theory? The question that I realize has been walking beside me all these years of my work.  At once both vexing and energizing to me.  Often alienating to others. But as Rilke said, if you live the question, perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along into the answers.

To all the questions yet to be answered.

Thank you.