• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

33 Charts

  • About
    • What is 33 Charts?
    • Bryan Vartabedian MD
  • Blog
  • 33mail
  • Foci
    • Social/Public Media
    • Physicians
    • Patients
    • Hospitals
    • Information
    • Process/Flow
    • Technology
    • Digital culture
    • Future Medicine
  • The Public Physician
Information, Patient experience, Patients

Listicles as the Next Health Education Tool

March 21, 2017 By Bryan Vartabedian · Reading Time: 2 minutes

3561626542_0896d0ce31_oA digital health colleague recently declared that she didn’t like listicles. As you hopefully know, a listicle is a chunk of writing shaped as a list. Wikipedia sums it up:

In journalism and blogging, a listicle is a short-form of writing that uses a list as its thematic structure, but is fleshed out with sufficient copy to be published as an article. A typical listicle will prominently feature a cardinal number in its title, with subsequent subheadings within the text itself reflecting this schema. The word is a portmanteau derived from list and article. It has also been suggested that the word evokes “popsicle”, emphasising the fun but “not too nutritious” nature of the listicle.

Health professionals, she claimed, were above lists. But a listicle is just a shape that content takes. It’s a format. I like listicles. And I like the idea of listicles for health education. Here’s why:

  • They respect the reader. Listicles respect the fact that readers don’t want to dig to get to the point. Kinda like eating a whole lobster.
  • They make a promise. Listicles make the promise of concise, tight, nicely designed chunks of information. This promise is irresistible to tired consumers. And when my writing makes a promise of 4 points my click-through rate is higher.
  • They acknowledge modern information consumption. Modern digital health consumers eat in chunks. Whether you like this or not is irrelevant.

Content strategists and people who sell things understand this. Health professionals don’t. Most health education material that crosses my desk is longwinded and unapproachable. Endless strings of paragraphs and pages of bloviating health instructions do little to inspire.

So if we want health information conveyed, why not exploit the listicle? Why haven’t we learned from those in marketing who understand

“But you don’t sell things, Dr V.”

Au contraire, Pierre. Every minute of every clinical day is a display of selling and negotiation with parents. If you don’t believe that you have no idea how pediatricians work.

We don’t have to like how consumers consume but we should understand it.

Fun, but not too nutritious. Why not leverage that?

Image via Jacki Gallagher on Flickr

Related Articles

  • What if Health Communication Was Like Buzzfeed?
  • Curation - The Next Trend in Social Health
  • USF Health Looks to Create Next Gen MD Leaders

Tagged With: Communication

Related Articles

  • What if Health Communication Was Like Buzzfeed?
  • Curation - The Next Trend in Social Health
  • USF Health Looks to Create Next Gen MD Leaders

Primary Sidebar

Bryan Vartabedian, MD

Bryan Vartabedian, MD
Bryan Vartabedian is the Chief Pediatrics Officer at Texas Children’s Hospital North Austin and one of health care’s influential
voices on technology & medicine.
Learn More

Popular Articles

  • The Fate of Fired Cleveland Clinic Resident Lara Kollab
  • Cures Act Final Rule – How It Will Change Medicine
  • 12 Things About Doximity You Probably Didn’t Know
  • Should Physicians Give Their Cell Phone Number to Patients?
  • Doximity Dialer Video – Telemedicine’s Latest Power Player

Sign up for 33mail newsletter

Featured Articles

The Rise of Medicine’s Creative Class

Context Collapse and the Public Physician

Will the Future Need Doctors?

The Case for New Physician Literacies in the Digital Age

Health Care and the Visibility-Value Continuum

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Footer

What is 33 Charts?

With a mashup of curated and original content that crosses the spaces of digital health, media, communication, technology, patient experience, digital culture, and the humanities, 33 charts offers unique insight and analysis on the changing face of medicine.

Founded in 2009 as a center of community and thought leadership for the issues doctors face in a digital world, 33 charts was included in the National Library of Medicine permanent web archive in 2014.
Learn More

Foci

  • Digital culture
  • Digital Health
  • EHR/Health IT
  • Future Medicine
  • Hospitals
  • Information
  • Patients
  • Physicians
  • Process/Flow
  • Quality
  • Social/Public Media
  • Technology

Copyright © 2023 · 33 Charts · Privacy Policy