LiveWell Team
1 Faculty Advisor
4 Fellows
7 Co-Ops
CBDI Team
Multidisciplinary Clinical Team
Empowering patients and families to make informed decisions
Shared decision making is a key component of patient-centered health care. It is a process in which clinicians and patients work together to make decisions. When patients participate in decision making and understand what they need to do, they are more likely to follow through. Critical to the effectiveness of shared decision making is health literacy. Health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information needed to make appropriate health decisions.
Health literacy skills allow patients and their families to take control of their own well-being by making smart healthcare choices, improving their communication with doctors and giving them the information they need to advocate for themselves in a medical setting. How can we improve the health literacy of our patients and families while empowering them to make more informed decisions about their care?
LiveWell Team
1 Faculty Advisor
4 Fellows
7 Co-Ops
CBDI Team
Multidisciplinary Clinical Team
A compassionate, empathetic, and trustworthy approach to the visual and verbal narrative results in an engaging and informative viewer experience.
Proven to have a positive influence on low health literacy individuals without negatively impacting high health literacy populations, complex information was translated into compelling and informative story-based animations.
During the development process, patients and families provided helpful feedback about how well different visual concepts were communicating.
12
15
70k
Only 12% of American adults have proficient health literacy. A growing body of research also shows that low health literacy is associated with worse child health outcomes.
The library currently contains a growing collection of fifteen videos, educating patients and their families on a range of topics important each phase of their cancer care, from diagnosis to treatment and into survivorship.
Residing online, the library allows patients and families to access information whenever they need it, from wherever they are.
What We Did
User Interviews
Sketching
Storyboarding
Character Creation
Motion Design
Oncology patients and their families are frequently overwhelmed, confused, and uncertain about their future after getting a cancer diagnosis. It’s common for them to feel like they’re figuratively drowning in paperwork and new information. Complex concepts can be difficult to understand when explained only using text, further compounding current health literacy concerns, and negatively impacting shared decision-making.
Each animated video contained in the library addresses a specific topic, combining a visual and verbal storytelling to explain complicated subjects and answer important questions such as, “What is Leukemia?”, “How Might Cancer Treatment Affect My Nutrition?”, “What is Proton Therapy”, and “How Can I Preserve My Fertility?”. Digital distribution allows for shareable content and consistent access to important information, helping patients and their families to take control of their own well-being, while improving their communication with doctors.
IMPACT
Helping to create a more informed patient population about their diagnosis and care, the videos have been viewed over 70,000 times.
Click on top right menu in video to view playlist and navigate to other videos.
