The Health Writer Hub Blog

A US research team aimed to determine the natural language indicators of uncertainty – and then understand how these indicators predict decisional conflict.

Health buzzwords like ‘protein’, ‘paleo’ and ‘organic’ are used by marketers as key selling points for many of today’s health products. Yet these words can also trick consumers into believing a product is healthier than it really is.

As health writers, we focus a lot of our energy on knowledge. We write ‘how to’ articles about eating better, exercising more, breaking bad habits, making healthy choices and reducing risk factors. We offer knowledge – but, we rarely sell the desire to change.

This is a question that comes up often in my course groups. And, it’s reasonable and natural to worry about time. Time is money. The less time you spend writing, the more money you make. The more time you spend researching, writing, reviewing and refining, the more your hourly rate drops.

As health writers, we need to recognise and understand the social factors that limit health literacy so we can help our readers understand our health information. We can do this by looking at the key outcomes from a range of health literacy research into both local and global communities.

As health writers, we need to identify the ideal medium to share our key messages to our target audience to ensure our writing influences health outcomes.

While quality medical evidence underlies accurate health writing, clear writing helps the information translate easily – enter the concept of ‘processing fluency’.