module 2 reflection

Good Afternoon!

I agree with everyone else’s responses. After the conclusion of module 2, my top three insights included: Audience segmentation, Health literacy, and presentation skills.

Audience segmentation is important because it helps us gain a better understanding of our audience and that can eventually lead to us better tailoring our health campaigns to individuals who are in these segments. Like I stated a few weeks ago, I really liked the VALS and PRIZM assessments because they also can show how segmenting could generalize the population or individuals may fit into multiple categories.

I was unaware of the number of people who have low to limited health literacy. This can pose a huge problem for health educators, practitioners, etc. if they are not communicating to patients in terms the patients understand. Like many have already stated, I was shocked to discover that nearly half the adult population has low/limited health literacy. As Dr. Talavera stated in lecture for 662 a few weeks ago, “Health Literacy is usually the orphan when we do interventions because it often gets overlooked.” After reading the Health Literacy: A prescription to end confusion, I understood what he meant and that was one of the main reasons the IOM wrote the book because we did not know the scope of the problem. Although, the recommendations from lecture and the book shows some promise to improving people’s health literacy levels!

Presentation skills were also important, as was evident from the health literacy lecture and our “brown bag symposium.” We had a whole day to give and hear presentations from our peers and I found the books we read to be interesting and although most communicated different messages, they all demonstrated the importance of health communication. Like Lanny, Kristi and Jessica stated, I too enjoyed the Zen presentation by Anh. I presented a few people after her and my presentation could have been a little more “Zen,” but now I know for future reference!

Happy Sunday! Don’t forget to change your clocks 1 hour ahead!