Customized Training Opportunities
Center staff can provide customized training opportunities in health and science communication. Workshops and seminars can be tailored to fit a range of audiences, time constraints, and areas of interest. Options include:
Health Communication
Clear Communication for Clearer Consent: Incorporating Health Literacy
This seminar covers the basics of health literacy and best practices for addressing health literacy concerns in the informed consent process. The session also covers incorporating plain language principles into the consent process, teach-back, and other best practices for communication.
Empathic Responding: What it is and Why it Matters.
Empathic responding is critical in building and maintaining relationships, especially in health care. In this session, we will cover what empathic responding is, what it is not, and how it differs from empathy. Participants will have the opportunity to practice empathic responding.
Health Communication and Plain Language Resources
This session walks participants through several free health communication and health literacy resources, including readability programs, plain language dictionaries, and health communication toolkits.
The Power of Plain Language
As an expert in your field, it can be a challenge to communicate highly specialized information. In this session, you will learn how to strengthen your writing using plain language principles and strategies for making your message accurate, accessible, and actionable. We’ll also look at examples of plain language and provide resources to help you get started.
Science Communication
Clear & Effective Scientific Presentations: Tips and Resources
In this workshop, you will gain insight into planning, preparing, and delivering well-structured talks that will engage your audience. Harness the power of presentation design aspects, such as slide color, contrast, and animations, to enhance your message. You’ll also learn how to navigate Q&As successfully and discover graphical support resources available to the WashU community.
Graphical Abstracts: A Primer
Uncover the potential of visual abstracts to boost the impact of your research beyond the peer-reviewed paper. In this session, you will learn what makes a well-designed, informative graphical abstract and what graphic design resources are available to help you.
Less is More: Crafting & Delivering Compelling Messages
As a scientist, you are highly knowledgeable in your area of expertise, and writing a scholarly paper or presenting your latest findings is usually easy. But explaining what you do outside of your professional circle may be difficult, especially if you have limited time. In this workshop, you will learn and practice distilling your message to the essentials and delivering it effectively in various scenarios.