An Inclusive Healthcare Industry Starts With the Content

Summary

• Inclusive content ensures all readers can access important health info and allows them to feel represented and valued.
• Tips for inclusive content creation include having diverse voices on your team, leveraging audience data, and featuring diverse patient stories.

Not all bruises are “black and blue”

When reading about health conditions online, you’ll probably find these symptoms listed on different condition pages:

• Blue lips
• Black and blue bruises
• Red rashes

You may have realized these descriptions are only helpful for people with certain skin tones. They fail to account for people of color (POC).

Healthcare isn’t the only industry to blame for a lack of inclusivity, and POC aren’t the only group that’s historically been left out. But the way we write about health information matters, and it’s up to us as healthcare marketers to make this change.

What is inclusive content?

Inclusive content is writing that’s meant to resonate with diverse populations. It isn’t just about avoiding biases or stereotypes — it’s mindfully creating content that ensures all readers feel seen, heard, and understood.

Inclusive healthcare content considers and integrates the perspectives of people from different groups, including (but not limited to):

• Race
• Ethnicity
• Religion
• Gender identity
• Sexual orientation
• Disability

Inclusion in healthcare content extends beyond the language. Every touchpoint matters when creating content that reflects each of your readers. Consider other elements of content marketing, such as imagery, website accessibility, and the channels you use to distribute content.

Related: Learn how to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in healthcare content.

An inclusive healthcare industry begins with inclusive healthcare content. Learn how to create inclusive content that pushes the needle forward.

Inclusion in healthcare is a widespread problem

Healthcare communication is often not as comprehensive as it should be — because, in many cases, medical education is not.

A 2018 study of medical textbooks found that about 75% of the imagery shows how conditions present on patients with light skin. Fewer than 5% showcase dark skin.

Medical student Malone Mukwende noticed this disparity. Now he’s written a book to help providers diagnose health issues that affect people with darker skin. Take inspiration from Malone: If you can’t find inclusive healthcare content, create it.

6 tips for creating inclusive content

When you recognize health disparities and do something to change them, you help more people have better health outcomes. Take steps to ensure you speak to a broad audience and meet potential patients’ needs.

1. Include diverse perspectives on your team

“If you’re creating healthcare content that is meant to reach and educate people of color, then people of color should be writing it,” says David Dylan Thomas, author of Design for Cognitive Bias. “That’s the ideal to strive for and is an ongoing journey. Just because you’ve hired one Black woman, she’s not going to be able to speak for all Black women, any more than one white man can speak for all white men.”

The same applies for other social factors and identity-based groups. Thomas says that if your hiring practices had a compass, aim toward having a staff representing as many different racial, ethnic and gender identities as possible.

2. Create sections for different audiences on key pages

When you’re downloading a new computer program, you can often find specific instructions for the device or system you’re using (iPhone, Android, Mac, PC). Thomas suggests using a similar approach for healthcare info. Offer sections that pertain to different audiences.

For example, heart attack symptoms are different for men than women. Mayo Clinic and Stanford Healthcare’s heart attack symptoms pages include sections devoted to women’s specific symptoms. You can use this approach for any condition that affects various populations differently.

3. Use plain language to ensure inclusivity

Plain language content helps each of your audiences understand health information. Review our guide to writing in plain language to create accessible health content.

As a preview, plain language writing tips include:

• Using bulleted lists
• Avoiding jargon
• Writing concisely

4. Leverage audience data

During the coronavirus pandemic, New Orleans health officials used census data to inform their testing strategy. They found that the areas hardest hit by COVID were places where residents didn’t have cars, so their drive-thru testing sites were not serving their highest-need populations. This informed their decision to send mobile testing vans into those neighborhoods.

You can use your own analytics or public data , like New Orleans health officials, to better serve your audiences and improve health outcomes.

5. Create an inclusive library of patient stories

Patient stories help potential patients see themselves in the success and recovery of others. A diverse collection of stories may better prepare those considering treatment or surgery.

When culling patient stories, include people of various ethnicities, life stages, and socioeconomic status. Recovery from knee replacement surgery will look different for a wealthy retiree than for a parent working a minimum-wage job.

6. Perform an inclusive content review

Before you publish content, you likely edit and quality assure the writing. Add one more step to this process for inclusive healthcare content:

Reread the content with the goal of finding any audiences you may have left out.

Keep this list of factors in mind:

• Ability (people with and without disabilities)
• Age
• Education level
• Gender (women, men, transgender, nonbinary)
• Immigrant status 
• Language
• Military service
• Racial groups and ethnicities
• Religion
• Sexual orientation (LGBTQ+)
• Socioeconomic status

Make inclusive content the norm in healthcare

Disparity in healthcare communication is a longstanding problem that can’t be solved overnight. But every time we shine a light on the issue and take action to remedy it, we are contributing to improvement.

Want to make inclusive content a priority for your health system? Our healthcare writers can help.

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