Writing in Plain Language for different cultures

The idea of changing some of your English messaging for different cultures is to adapt the writing and messaging to consider other cultural beliefs.  The overall objective is to move the patient behavior to action.  Consider some of these cultural beliefs that may change the content of your English Plain Language Materials.  It's important to note that strategies to improve health literacy for low-literate individuals are distinct from strategies for culturally diverse populations.  In order to adapt your message, you must be aware of the cultural barriers that may exist.

Hmong Culture

The Hmong language lacks words that correlate directly with Western words for disease processes. Consequently, interpretation in health care settings sometimes requires lengthy explanations and is sometimes impossible. The Hmong may have difficulty comprehending illnesses or diseases they have never encountered before, and some Hmong find chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and hypertension, particularly challenging to comprehend because of the concept of a controllable but not curable condition (Cha, 2003; Johnson, 2002).

HEP B and the Asian Community

Asians are at greater risk because to begin with, there are more Asian people infected with

hepatitis B than non-Asians. Although hepatitis B is not an "Asian disease", it certainly affects
hundreds of millions of Asians. The HEP B Smart campaign was created and targeted to the Asian populations primarily in the California area. This campaign was also translated into a variety of Asian languages: http://www.hepbsmart.com/en/default.aspx

Russian culture

Russian patients lack a concept of "chronic disease" based on their experiences with Soviet health care.  When writing for this population, strategies should be used to help this population understand that they need to continue with their diabetes or hypertension medications even though they may begin to feel better.

Where do I start with my communications?
Before you begin to adjust or create new communications for different cultural audiences, add qualitative pre-testing to explore diverse patients' understanding of instruments you are going to consider using. 

HIPAA and HITECH compliance for healthcare communications

One of our main areas of expertise in Plain Language and in multilingual communications is healthcare and life sciences.  In addition to building trust with our clients, we also make compliance a top priority.


LSI is HIPAA compliant and our Translation Management Portal, FLOW is HIPAA compliant as well.  All of our employees go through HIPAA/HITECH training and training on our corporate policies which are also displayed in our locations.  All of our translators and interpreters are required to sign a business associate agreement. 

According to HIPAA for 2013, all Business Associates must be compliant by September of 2013.  We have been proactive on this front as many of our clients are healthcare plans and managed healthcare providers and being the "process heads" that we are, we have ensured that our policies are sound, we perform regular audits, we train regularly and we have contingency plans in place.  If you build it, the trust will come.......

What does good Health Literacy Writing and Design look like?

This presentation gives you an overview and examples of design and writing standards for health literacy materials. Wondering what interactives are in a brochure or booklet? How are the selection of images important? Where does the organization of material fit in your priority list when getting ready to write clear and concise patient information?

These principles are now applied to not only healthcare communications but also legal, financial, consumer awareness and other areas that are striving for Plain Language. 

We work in the total lifecycle of the content and this gives us a greater understanding of the development of material and concepts so that when you are also ready to translate it into another language, we know the key objectives and work with our translators on the cultural aspects of health literacy.