There’s no secret sauce when it comes to communicating with people about health & science.
Why should there be?
We can be so different – different degrees of language skills, ways to access
good, trustworthy information, different needs, knowledge, and lived experiences.
At the Lab our mindset is to be skeptical of dogma and critically intrigued when It comes to different ways of working to reach good solutions.
Human language is a remarkable tool that connects us to others, to what we think about and how we think about it. Language empowers and just as easily can dis-empower. Language establishes hierarchies of power and so too creates inequalities. We do not all have equal access to the information commons and the knowledge to live a better life.
Understandable, accurate, trustworthy health and science information is a basic ingredient for a healthier, safer and more equitable society. But it is increasingly clear that the public is overfed and undernourished – awash with changing public health guidance, ever-present broadcast & social media, and the talk of daily life, the growing disparities in health, susceptibility to pseudo-science, have highlighted how we must do a far better job in engaging and communicating to advance health literacy.
We are educators, linguists, anthropologists, community activists and designers with a lot of experience researching, teaching and crafting a wide range of health and science communication tools and campaigns. Print, mixed media, e-Health, social media …
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