Healthcare media design for low-literate users

Low health literacy has been associated with poor outcomes in health care. Recent research suggests that good healthcare media can help to reduce the literacy barrier and enhance health outcomes. However, the majority of healthcare media are constructed for well-educated users rather than those with low literacy skills. This begs the question of whether or not various healthcare media have the same effect on low-literate users. Immigrant populations are vulnerable to serious health disparities, and language barriers and these may further exacerbate their limited health literacy in accessing health care information. Yet, ways to help low-literate parents to look after their children by applying healthcare media are still at an early stage of development. The aim of this study is to establish useful design strategies for Graphic and Information designers when planning and designing healthcare media for low-literate users. This research was implemented through four experiments, including a focus group interview and questionnaire survey, a pre-post knowledge test, a usability evaluation, and semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed the problems immigrant parents usually encounter in caring for their children’s health. The results demonstrated that the influence of interventions by leaflets and websites on low-literate users is not significantly different. The findings also showed the criteria used by low-literate users to evaluate healthcare media and the visual factors of healthcare media that affect their satisfaction. An assessment checklist related to the design of health educational materials for low-literate users was also listed. This is an interdisciplinary research that integrates Design, Communication and Public Health. It provides a holistic framework for improving health intervention using various methodologies, including development, experiment, observation, comparison, and analysis.