It’s important to make sure materials are written at a reasonable reading level, but that’s just the beginning, and only one part of the solution. Appropriate reading levels help to make things understandable, but they don’t focus on actually engaging the patient, which is essential for changing behavior and creating “healthy habits.” For that, I believe you need to think about three additional elements: Attention, Relevance, and Relationship

Attention means just that – gaining the patient’s attention as they’re bombarded with messages and media. Advertisers are generally good at this but the techniques used in advertising aren’t always applicable to the patient education environment. Recent research we’ve conducted using actual patient education messages showed sometimes surprising results in this area. For example, we found that in some situations the typical “happy person picture” may do little to grab the patient’s attention, while simple but bold headlines – especially in the form of an intriguing question – often fared better. The context in which the message is delivered appears to have a great influence on this, and the take-away message is that you shouldn’t assume that what works for your DTC campaign will work for your patient education materials. The two can work hand-in-hand, but too many brand teams think in terms of one size fits all. It doesn’t.

Relevance, in my opinion, is the key driver for engagement in patient education. The more you can customize your materials to meet the needs of key segments of your audience, the better. The newly diagnosed patient has a different set of fears, concerns, and experiences than that same patient may have one year later, as they consider the additional therapy their physician has prescribed. Yet many companies try to deliver the same set of generalized, vaguely helpful advice to both groups. This is often done because it’s difficult and time-consuming to take materials through the medical, legal, and regulatory clearance processes our industry requires, but it can pay big dividends to brand teams and companies willing to invest just a little more time. My experience has shown that if you work with your MLR review board in advance, explaining the different needs of your core audience segments and how you plan to vary your core materials for each, this process will be much smoother. Help them understand your need for materials that “strike a chord” with the audience. Much of your content can be consistent across all pieces you develop, with the variations designed to achieve relevance highlighted for an easier review.

In addition to delivering information, establishing an ongoing relationship with the patient should be the goal of most patient education programs; the idea that we can “check the box” for patient communication by delivering a single brochure or enrolling the patient to receive a trinket and booklet in a CRM program is often both bad medicine and a poor investment decision. The goal should be to assist the patient by anticipating their likely needs, delivering information that answers their questions and informs their decisions, and showing that you value them as both customers and people. And like most relationships, this will probably require interaction through a number of channels. In-office, in-pharmacy, online, and the list goes on – the patient should feel that you want to engage them, have accurate and helpful information they can easily use, and actually care about their needs. That patient is much more likely to be engaged, adhere to their prescribed therapy, and enter into a patient-brand relationship that meets both their needs and those of the brand team.