Projects

Sage Words helps local agencies tailor messages to their target audience. We design materials for a specific community to address a specific need. With community-based agencies as partners, we work to create materials that the agencies need to help their clients get healthy and stay healthy. Our materials reinforce health education using key words and graphics to assist non-readers in remembering key points and instructions. Below are some example of projects we have worked on and are currently in progress.

Arkansas Department of Health/Women’s Health Section/Center for Health Training

Medical History Forms

Sage Words developed a family planning medical history form that met the needs of limited literacy clients and was quick and simple for both staff and client to use.  Sage Words also produced a report for the staff detailing textual and design elements used in the form and explaining how they helped remove literacy barriers for clients. (click here to read report-pdf).

Sage Words designed a one-page version of the form, (click here for pdf) with both staff and client information on the same page, and a version that separates staff and client forms (click here for pdf).  The benefit of the single page form is less paper and paperwork.  The separate forms allow for greater reduction of barriers for limited literacy clients.  They are keyed to each other, for easy transfer of information.
 
If you would like to compare with the original form, click here (pdf).

Title X Family Planning Program, Region VI/Center for Health Training

Oral Contraceptive Pill Project

Sage Words is currently researching and reviewing written materials regarding instructions for oral contraceptives currently in use by family planning clinics in Region V of the Title X Program; conducting focus groups with clinic clients and staff regarding these materials;  and selecting and creating low literacy materials for use in  these clinics. 

Woman to Woman Conference: Health Literacy Session

Sage Words volunteers worked with the Center for Health Training to present an educational session at the Woman to Woman conference for peer health educators  in a women's prison in Central Texas.

The interactive hands-on workshop involved about 50 women and was on producing good low-literacy heath education materials. The response was tremendous. The peer educators ranged from women who did not ever expect to see the outside of the prison to those who were in for a couple of years. They were deeply interested in their role as educators and immersed in the content in the most intimate of ways.

The lives of many, if not most, of them had been profoundly influenced by unhealthy behaviors ranging from drug and alcohol use to sexual abuse. It was therefore an easy task for Sage Words educators to offer ideas about the importance of getting good health information to people of all skill levels, how difficult that is to do, and what impact it has on lives when health information is not accessible.

Here is a handout developed by Sage Words for the presentation--"Ten Tips for Creating Health Education Materials"  [pdf].

The workshop culminated in the production of posters by groups of two to three peer educators. The creators had about twenty minutes to produce their posters, and they are excellent examples of the principles of accessible health literacy materials. Sage Words is producing some of them as print-ready posters, coming soon.

Hopi and Navajo Brochures

Sage Words is working with agencies on the Navajo and Hopi reservations to created low-literacy, culturally-relevant brochures on topics identified by local health educators as needed.

Our brochure on pandemic flu features illustrations that incorporate local architecture, landscape and people will be in a bilingual English-Navajo version. Go to the products page for a free download of this and other materials.

We believe that this brochure and the accompanying handwashing and cough-covering posters can calm fears about flu outbreaks.

Sage Words Promotes education about pandemic flu prevention and also stands opposed to stigmatization of Mexican immigrants and visitors as a result of this current H1N1 outbreak. Please see the website of the Migrant Clinicians Network and other reliable sources for accurate messages about the origins and propagation of this flu. 

We are also developing a brochure on how to talk with adolescent children about methamphetamine use is being developed specifically for Hopi parents.