N.D. project trains future health professionals to write plain-language health stories for rural newspapers

A University of North Dakota project is teaching future health professionals how to put health information in plain language for rural newspaper readers. Targeted Rural Health Education aims to improve rural health through better health literacy, which the pandemic has shown is vital to public well-being. The article includes a blueprint for the program so other medical schools can replicate it.

School of Medicine and Health Sciences students are taught health-literacy concepts and tools, the Rural Health Information Hub reports: "Participants write a newspaper-friendly, data-informed, public health-focused education article that embraces health literacy's emphasis on the use of plain language. Because rural newspapers are an important disseminators of information — including health information — rural newspaper editors are the strategic project partners." Since the project's launch in 2017, nearly 30 students have published  articles in Montana, North Dakota and Wisconsin.

The project is a collaboration of the North Dakota Rural Health Association, the University of North Dakota Center for Rural Health, and the UND Department of Family and Community Medicine.