Words have power. The power to motivate, engage and inspire. Or the power to discourage, alienate and demoralize. Words can either create behavior change—or prevent it.
Health is personal and the way that personal behaviors are discussed can trigger both positive and negative emotions. Those emotions have a direct impact on a person’s openness and willingness to act. When creating health-related content for behavior-change campaigns, these nuances can make all the difference.
Here’s an example: We have worked on a multi-year patient education campaign to destigmatize obesity, raise awareness of it as a chronic condition, and advocate for insurance coverage for comprehensive treatment and care. We initiated this work by building an online resource center highlighting the wide range of treatment options. When we recently expanded the campaign, we revisited the content we’d originally developed. But this time, we engaged a patient advocate who has experienced a lifelong struggle with obesity. Her insights and feedback about word choices were eye-opening. Here are a few key takeaways:
- Acknowledgement is crucial. Simply acknowledging that achieving a healthy weight can be very challenging is important. It makes people living with obesity feel understood and more open to exploring treatment options.
- Shift the focus away from weight and numbers on a scale. Word choices make a big difference in focusing on the disease instead of implying that obesity is a moral or personal failing. To remove that stigma, we changed “There are ways to manage your weight” to “There are ways to manage living with obesity;” when discussing BMI, we used “healthy weight” instead of “recommended weight” and we changed “excess weight” to “excess fat.”
- Identify and reduce judgmental language. Emphasizing “weight loss” can be stigmatizing and it incorrectly suggests that weighing less means you are healthier. When describing good nutrition and exercise, calling them “options to optimize your health” is more constructive and less judgmental than saying “options for weight loss.”
We also work on a national initiative to provide people with the tools and resources to take care of their Whole Health: Mind, Body, Spirit, and Community. The initiative is designed to inspire, motivate, and then activate people to change their behavior to create health and well-being. In this case, we identified a specific phrase that was causing friction with our audience. The word “empower” turned out to be off-putting. It was intended to inspire and motivate but it had the opposite effect. People felt that being “empowered” meant that their ability to make a personal change was being handed to them by someone. The word “engage” was preferred because it made people feel like they actually had the power to take control versus the control being bestowed on them.
With these examples in mind, here are three tips for ensuring that your choice of words resonates powerfully with your key audiences when approaching behavior-change campaigns—or any campaigns.
1. Engage stakeholders.
Engaging key stakeholders to provide perspective on language is crucial. Otherwise, you may unknowingly introduce negative judgements, bias or stigma. Drawing from the lived experiences of others – especially those who have struggled with a health condition as a patient or provider – helps to ensure that language is welcoming and inclusive.
2. Test your messages.
Message testing is a crucial step in making sure language lands as intended. The Reis Group has a proprietary message-testing process that engages internal and external stakeholders. We take an iterative approach to capture nuances and make updates throughout the process. The result is a message platform that is not just acceptable, but powerful and usable.
3. Check the reading level.
Ensuring that content is at the appropriate reading level is particularly important when developing patient materials. Language at too high a reading level can lead to poor understanding. This can result in worse health outcomes and greater disparities. Using plain language at a modest reading level increases understanding, improves decision making and results in better adherence to treatment.
Words really do matter. If you make careful word choices, you will engage patients to act and change their behavior in powerful ways. (And, moreover, your clients will probably be very pleased.)
Want your messaging to inspire meaningful change? Contact us — we’d love to learn about your goals and explore how we can help.
