Presenter(s)

Austin E Hillman, Kaitlin Leigh Restrepo, Jennifer H Sebell

Comments

This poster reflects research conducted as part of a course project designed to give students experience in the research process.

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Description

In an effort to acknowledge the importance of health literacy and respond to a health information need, the purpose of this project was to make an article explaining chemotherapy accessible to Intensive English Program (IEP) students with a third or fourth grade reading level. We revised an existing webpage from Cancer Treatment Centers of America about chemotherapy to make it more accessible for the IEP students. The original web page had a reading level of grade 14 and 7 months (14.7), and the intended audience is patients or loved ones of patients who do not know much about chemotherapy. The methods employed by our team to simplify the inaccessible article included SMOG tests and a Health Literacy Load Analysis to assess the reading level, visits to an IEP class for feedback, and creating/editing a brochure. The final brochure that was formed through these methods had a reading level of grade 5 and 9 months (5.9), which was more than half of the reading level of the original article (which was 14.7). The brochure enabled IEP students to understand need-to-know information about chemotherapy from the original health document. From our results, there is evidence that taking the time to assess the readability of a health document can facilitate informed health decisions by individuals whose first language is not English.

Publication Date

4-5-2017

Project Designation

Course Project - Undergraduate

Primary Advisor

Ann E. Biswas

Primary Advisor's Department

English

Keywords

Stander Symposium project

Chemotherapy: What Does That Even Mean?

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