I too work for WIC and our policy is for our handouts to be as close to 5th grade reading level as possible (which can be frustrating when the calculation is partly based on length of words and "breastfeeding" is 13 letters.)  Also, in my agency a lot of the clients are not native-English speakers and although we do our best to produce materials in at least Spanish as well as English, that doesn't help those whose mother tongue is Hmong, Somali, Amharic, Oromo, Swahili, Chinese, Laotian....
Marcia McCoy, IBCLC, freezing in below-zero (Fahrenheit) weather
>Date:    Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:07:42 -0700
>From:    Tara Guy <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: Just one bottle

>I don't remember the statistics off the top of my head, but the "average"
>literacy level in the US is something appalling - I want to say 5th-6th
>grade level, but I could be mistaken.  That's the literacy level that you
>are asked to write to in most publications meant for the lay public.

>I would go one step further, and say that the population that I see has an
>average reading literacy level of roughly 3rd grade.  That's why the need
>for the "simpler" versions.  I find that I need to be *very* careful about
>the words I use when I talk with my clients - they simply don't understand
>me otherwise.  It is all about where you work.  If I worked in a more
>affluent community or somewhere where people actually graduated high school
>or went to college, it might be different. And the parents that I see with
>more education do breastfeed. It is the low-income/low-education parents
>that I need to reach most.  I agree, the simpler the handouts, the better
>for my particular population.

>Tara

>Tara Guy, CHA/PA-C, HBCE, IBCLC
>www.rockymountainbaby.com
>helping mothers birth and parent from the heart

>"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."  Mahatma Ghandi

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