Marketing Health Education

She thought her milk was bad. She was told that her milk was so bad, in fact, that if she continued to breast feed children, they would all die. Just like her first baby, because she was cursed. So, since she couldn't breastfeed her newborn for fear of killing him with her curse, she watered down 7-Up, put it in a bottle, and used this weak sugar water to sustain her newborn. As you might guess, this baby died, 5 months later, of severe dehydration and his mother's mis-education.

This is a real story. It is painfully documented in the NY TIMES. This story is representative of a global health education and literacy crisis.

Here, in our own backyard, the same health mis or lack of education is contributing to healthcare costs, mortality, and poor health outcomes. Women misuse birth control because they didn't understand the directions. They didn't understand the directions because they are written at a 10th grade level while they read at the 7th or worse. A baby is fed the wrong medicine, in the wrong way, because the mother was too embarrassed to tell the doctor or pharmacist she didn't understand.

But what do we do? How do we help low health literate populations better understand their care? How do we know who they are? We ask. We provide. We research.

Last week, I presented a research proposal at a symposium to understand how low health literate populations can be marketed to better to improve health outcomes. I'm particularly looking at how OTC products can be positioned to low health literate audiences to eliminate misinformation and replace it with consumable health education that can be spread household to household, peer to peer, community to community. What if products and health services were communicated to educate, not to tell? What if we used treatments and interventions as a way to spread accurate, reliable health information and not perpetuate myths?

If that was the case, maybe there would be no bad milk. Only support. Only education. Only targeted marketing. For good.

Look for more updates on my work soon.