addressing health literacy one artwork at a time

After working at multiple no-cost immigrant health clinics, Anna Douglas learned about the severe lack of culturally sensitive and translated health education materials available. Current material is either too complicated or too general, too wordy or not wordy enough, and often does not take into account patients’ cultural background.

Working with patients, she also noted how educating them about their illnesses or ailments helped empower them to take care of themselves and follow physician’s suggestions. Many patients she worked with were illiterate or non-english speaking which led her to using images and drawings. This led her to researching, drawing, and developing a series of culturally sensitive/specific and accurate educational materials. After receiving grants and working with various state Departments of Health, Colorful Health is further developing materials every day.

• Understanding that physicians have limited time, we wanted to provide a visual aid for physicians to use both in the office and for patients to take home after their appointment. Creating a coloring book provides a way for patients to engage with educational material after they have left the doctor’s office so that they can spend more time with the information, becoming more comfortable and educated.

• Visual aids also provide an opportunity for those who may have low reading literacy to learn and engage with materials about their health.

• Coloring provides a low stress way for patients to engage with what otherwise might be stressful topics while still providing insight into their ailments.

• We also understand that patients have many responsibilities, but providing material that can remain in their home also provides the opportunity for children or other family members to engage with the material and in turn, involve the patient.

Upon request by communities for materials based on their needs, we perform in-depth primary research on the latest information ranging from the micro (such as disease pathophysiology) to the macro (such as epidemiological and ethnographic data). We collate and translate this information such that it is easy to understand and more accessible to a wider audience.

Working throughout the process with physicians, researchers, and health-educators, we ensure that our research and materials cover the entirety of a topic accurately and comprehensively.

We use our research and feedback from professionals to guide our artistic process in the creation of our coloring books and pages. We use analogies, images, and more to better explain complicated topics.

We bring our materials into the community, trial-running them and asking patients and health professionals for their feedback. We produce numerous iterations so we can create the best products before supplying them to our communities.

We make sure to work with a cross section of various cultural demographics amongst professionals and patients to create products that are culturally sensitive, appropriate, and specific as we believe relatability improves comprehension.

We are always looking for help! Whether that be helping to produce our materials in more languages or for more cultures, for different illnesses or health issues, etc.

We are also always looking for collaborators who can help us get our educational materials directly into clinics via donations.

If either of these ways to help sound intriguing, please contact us!