Branding and health communication: writing for the lay public

Medical jargon can be difficult to translate into easy-to-read-and-understand text for the lay public. Here are some examples of blog posts from the #KeepOnBeating campaign to raise awareness about cardiovascular disease, led by Pfizer and JW Thompson in partnership with the Ministry of Health in the UAE.

Blog #1: Is there an age for CVD?

Blog #2: Debunking myths about CVD.

Blog #3: What’s in your lunch?

You can see the rest of the articles here.

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Health promotion to raise awareness about COVID-19

COVID-19 started off as ‘just another pandemic’ which was expected to be as short-lived as its predecessors. Unfortunately, that turned out not to be the case, and governments had to take more drastic measures to limit its spread – including dramatic lockdowns. Part of our efforts to educate the public on the necessity of this measure was to explain the disease’s infectivity and danger, including writing simple-language posts suitable for the local context. This article was published on Masarib.net in Arabic and disseminated via WhatsApp and different social media platforms, with great uptake among the target population.

الكورونا في السودان: اعتبارات خاصة

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Health policy

My area of research for several years, culminating in a number of papers, op-eds and reports including the following:

Health policies during a pandemic: UAE and Jordan perspectives: published as a feature article on internationalhealthpolicies.org

Rapid response: Informing the UAE’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic: co-authored with Mohamed bin Rashid School of Government.

Policy council on hospital accreditation in the Emirate of Dubai: coverage and analysis of several focus group discussions with report generation. Mohamed bin Rashid School of Government in collaboration with Dubai Health Authority.

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Health Financing

In 2014 we conducted a comprehensive review of the Sudanese health financing system following WHO’s OASIS tool, part of a larger effort to pave the way for the country’s first health financing policy. The first report of its kind – co-authored and edited by myself – can be found here:

Sudan Health System Financing Report

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Newsletter design and editing

Serving for several terms as editor-in-chief for the Public Health Institute’s quarterly newsletter, I rebranded and redesigned the newsletter and wrote/edited content.

The Evidence for Health: PHI’s quarterly newsletter: Issue no. 8