CEH was hired by Diabetes Australia-Victoria to review their Life! Taking Action on Diabetes participant's manual.
Previous participants in the Life! Program had reported that the manual was overwhelming in content and written at a level that was inaccessible to those with low English proficiency. CEH's task was to review the manual, rewrite sections in plain English, and simplify the activities and visual content to make it more accessible. A plain English glossary of terms was also to be created.
CEH undertook a literature review focussing on the use of plain English in the area of diabetes health promotion and prevention. This area, however, yielded no research or results. While many researchers focussed on communicating with specific CALD communities in their first language through translations and interpreters, little work had been done to communicate generic or ethno-specific diabetes prevention messages in plain English. The paucity of literature on this matter placed extra emphasis on the experiences, perspectives and feedback of the facilitators who run the LIFE! programs.
CEH then consulted with LIFE! Program facilitators and Vietnamese community members in November and December 2009. Individual face-to-face interviews, focus groups and telephone interviews were conducted with eight facilitators and a focus group was held with four older Vietnamese community members that met a specific selection criteria
Feedback from the consultations assisted in the revision and rewriting of the manual in plain English. A joint effort between CEH and Diabetes Australia-Victoria resulted in a sizeable reduction in the use of jargon, figurative speech and metaphorical language in the manual, allowing for the development of a plain English glossary of technical terms to be produced by Diabetes Australia-Victoria.