Across virtually every industry — including healthcare and health communications — it’s hard to find a tech innovation as impactful as artificial intelligence (AI). Whatever your role in communicating with patients, the public, or others in the healthcare environment, generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Bard, Claude, and more seem to promise to make your work easier and more productive.
Of course, crafting health-literate communications is not as straightforward as typing a prompt into an AI app. When producing communication of any kind using AI, it's crucial that health communicators adhere to health literacy standards to ensure information is accessible, understandable, and actionable for diverse audiences.
So, how can we harness the power of this technology effectively — while also upholding the standards of health literacy we value?
We’ve got you covered! Join us at IHA’s 23rd Annual Health Literacy Conference, May 14–16, 2024. This industry-leading event supports health literacy professionals with sessions and workshops covering a range of important topics. Including AI.
Whether you’ve never opened an AI app or have been exploring AI’s potential for your work for a while now, you’ll have an opportunity to learn something new each day at this virtual conference. Here are some sessions you won’t want to miss:
Workshop: AI-Assisted Video Software
Can AI help you create health-literate educational videos for your organization? Try it for yourself at this workshop on May 14 led by Tracy Mehan and Katie Donovan from the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
Mehan, director of research translation and communication for the Center, and Donovan, digital communication specialist, recently explored an AI video tool to create educational content for their audiences. (For a preview of what they learned, check out this webinar they offered recently!)
In this workshop, participants will learn from Mehan’s and Donovan’s experience what it takes to create effective health education videos using AI. You’ll join in live demonstrations showcasing how these platforms work, test-drive available features, and determine whether your team has the skills needed to successfully use this technology. Get excited by the possibilities of these tools — and figure out if AI-assisted video software is appropriate and feasible for your work now.
(If you aren’t able to claim a spot in this limited-space workshop, don’t worry! We’ll make it available for conference registrants to watch as a recording after the conference.)
Session: The Year of Positive Disruption in Patient Education
Advances in technology have always impacted the way people prefer to learn, and the current digital revolution is no exception. When we can’t meet patients’ expectations for the tools we utilize to reach and teach them, this affects patient satisfaction as well as the quality and cost of care.
Join Tom Bauer, senior director of patient education and engagement at Johns Hopkins Health System, on May 14 in an investigation of tools you can adopt — including AI-powered technology — to meet your patients where they are. They may prefer tech-enabled solutions, including the use of avatars, videos, podcasts, vodcasts, and e-books, or old-fashioned written materials and oral conversation.
Learn how the team at Johns Hopkins provides patient education tailored to each patient’s preferred learning methods. Identify gaps in your own offerings and learn to advocate for new methods and processes to educate patients in your organization.
Plenary: AI and Future Implications for Health Communication
AI is here. How will we choose to use it? How will it affect our work? What should we be thinking about? And what questions should we be asking?
Kick off your day on May 15 with this important plenary session about how we in the health literacy field should approach the fast-changing capabilities of AI in health communication. In this panel discussion, you’ll hear from experts in AI development and policymaking, as well as folks on the ground who are using AI to improve education materials and provider responses to patients.
Our panelists are Robert Jennings, executive director at National Public Health Information Coalition; Laura Schwab Reese, assistant professor in the department of public health at Purdue University; and Munmun De Choudhury, associate professor at the School of Interactive Computing in Georgia. Tracy Mehan, director of research translation and communication for the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, will facilitate.
Incorporating AI Into Health Literacy Communications
What AI tools can you confidently use in your daily health literacy work, whether developing and evaluating health materials or using social media to reach your audiences? And how will more advanced applications such as AI-driven research shape the field of health literacy?
On May 16, we’ll hear from Samuel Mendez, a PhD candidate at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who studies the integration of computational methods and media studies frameworks into health literacy research. Mendez will join our morning plenary panel on organizational health literacy, discussing challenges related to generative AI tools and the shifting social media landscape.
Later, Mendez will lead a workshop on incorporating AI into material production and assessment. Participants will explore the potential benefits and pitfalls of incorporating AI in online health communication workflows and consider policies to safeguard against pitfalls. This workshop has sold out, but conference participants can watch a recording and gain insights from it after the conference.
Register Today for IHA’s Health Literacy Conference
We welcome you to be part of this exciting exploration of the future of AI and health literacy, among many other topics. Learn more about the Health Literacy Conference here and register today.