University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA.
Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, USA.
Health Educ Behav. 2021 Oct;48(5):595-603. doi: 10.1177/1090198121994520. Epub 2021 Mar 19.
Health educators and advocacy groups often use side-by-side visual images to communicate about equity and to distinguish it from equality. Despite the near-ubiquity of these images, little is known about how they are understood by different audiences.
To assess the effectiveness of an image commonly used to communicate about health equity.
In 167 interviews with health stakeholders in Greater Cleveland, Ohio, in 2018 to 2019, a commonly used health equity image was shown to participants, who were asked to interpret its meaning. Interviewees included 21 health professionals, 21 clinicians, 22 metro-wide decision makers, 24 community leaders, and 79 community members.
About two thirds of our socioeconomically, racial/ethnically, educationally, and professionally diverse sample said the equity image helped clarify the distinction between "equality" and "equity." Yet less than one third offered an interpretation consistent with the image's goals of foregrounding not only injustice but also a need for systemic change. Patterns of misinterpretation were especially common among two groups: ideological conservatives and those of lower socioeconomic status. Conservatives were most likely to object to the image's message.
Equity images are widely used by public health educators and advocates, yet they do not consistently communicate the message that achieving equity requires systemic change. In this moment of both public health crisis and urgent concern about systemic racism, new visual tools for communicating this crucial message are needed.
健康教育家和倡导团体经常使用并排的视觉图像来传达公平信息，并将其与平等区分开来。尽管这些图像几乎无处不在，但对于不同受众如何理解它们，人们知之甚少。
评估一种常用于传达健康公平信息的图像的有效性。
在 2018 年至 2019 年期间，在俄亥俄州克利夫兰大都市区对 167 名健康利益相关者进行了 167 次访谈，向参与者展示了一种常用的健康公平图像，并要求他们解释其含义。受访者包括 21 名健康专业人员、21 名临床医生、22 名大都市决策者、24 名社区领袖和 79 名社区成员。
在我们这个社会经济、种族/族裔、教育和职业多样化的样本中，约有三分之二的人表示，公平图像有助于澄清“平等”和“公平”之间的区别。然而，不到三分之一的人提供的解释与图像的目标一致，即不仅突出不公正，而且需要系统变革。误解的模式在两个群体中尤为常见：意识形态保守派和社会经济地位较低的群体。保守派最有可能反对图像的信息。
公平图像被公共卫生教育者和倡导者广泛使用，但它们并不总是传达出实现公平需要系统变革的信息。在公共卫生危机和对系统性种族主义的紧急关注的时刻，需要新的视觉工具来传达这一关键信息。
