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CDC Reports Target Time-Strapped Healthcare Leaders

 |  By Alexandra Wilson Pecci  
   April 20, 2011

The CDC's Healthy Communities Program has released "Research to Practice:  Building Our Understanding," a series of reports that focus on health communication practices.

Community and rural hospital executives are among the intended audiences for the reports that aim to help hospitals and health systems improve their organizations.

Stephanie Sargent Weaver, PhD, MPH, CHES, senior evaluator for the Healthy Communities program, designed the tools as quick, how-to guides for health leaders who might not have the time or resources to do a lot of research. Instead, she did the research for them, compiling information from expert interviews, marketing and communication research, and CDC-licensed consumer databases.

"I started with the premise that people are extremely busy," she said in an interview. "So if they don't have the time or they don't have the resources here it is: a one-stop-shop."

The first four reports, which are available now, address topics ranging the most effective ways to communicate with the Hispanic and Latino communities to helping users apply effective evaluation strategies.

"For example, there are two [reports] out right now that are focused on evaluation," Weaver said. "[They] could suggest ways that the hospital executive could look at a certain area within the hospital and use these use these strategies or steps to conduct a review and find out what's working and what's not, hopefully with the intention that they would use the results to help improve the system."

In addition, Weaver said there's another report that's due for release which deals with people living in different geographic regions, specifically rural communities. One of the topics covered includes how rural communities get information and the best ways to communicate with them. For example, rather than using social media channels or the media, which might work well in more urban locations, rural communities tend to respond better to information from trusted community leaders.

"In rural communities, what works is just good old word of mouth," Weaver said. "If you find an opinion leader in the community—somebody who may work at the hospital, who may be connected to the hospital in some way that others look up to—they'll get the message."

Weaver also said she tried to pepper the reports with tips and takeaways from the subject matter experts that she interviewed. For example, she included in the report "Cultural Insights – Communication with Hispanic/Latinos" is practical information about interacting with these patients.

"When you're first talking with them in the healthcare setting, they don't like to be touched," she said. "It's little things like that."

There are four reports available now and several others in the clearance and development phases, with the goal of releasing new reports over the next several months. Additional topics will include ones that cover communicating with Asian Americans and African Americans, as well as several about how to use the principles of persuasion and one about people living in different geographical areas.

Weaver said that in surveys that she's conducted, public health professionals specifically mentioned that resources like these would be very helpful to them, so she hopes that these reports will help hospital executives and others get information they need without having to also go to other resources.

"I really just want them to be useful," she said.

Alexandra Wilson Pecci is an editor for HealthLeaders.

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