Every Picture Tells a Story: Health Literacy and COVID-19

Comprehension levels are often two or more grades below reading or education level. Comprehension drops even more when a person is under stress.

CDC's "Simply Put"

The CDC published “Simply Put A guide for creating easy-to-understand materials” several years ago, the bottom line for health topics 8th-grade readability is considered best. As someone who writes on health and science, I know first-hand that this is a tricky business; it is hard to convey nuance in complex topics simply. A group of researchers assessed the readability of 18 websites, written in English, from governments or public health agencies with more than 5,000 cases of COVID-19 as of April 5^th. They used a variety of well-established tools for determining readability, including those found in most word-processing programs. How did they do? 

None of them hit the mark, and that included 68 webpages from the CDC itself, where the lowest readability was 11^thgrade. Of course, readability is only one measure of communication, and the researchers never assessed anyone’s real understanding. And for the curious, this article’s readability is at the 12^th grade level. 

Source: Comparison of Readability of Official Public Health Information About COVID-19 on Websites of International Agencies and the Governments of 15 Countries JAMA Network Open DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.18033