The what, who, how & why: Building interpretive support models for the design of pediatric health education materials

Designing information for pediatric health education that is easily interpreted by patients is complicated by factors including attitudes and complex power relationships. This study examines such factors in relation to three pediatric health education case studies on asthma management, chronic functional constipation and rehabilitation. They emphasize direct communication with pediatric patients with a view to increasing patient empowerment. Strategic graphic design is employed in collaboration with clinicians to create multimodal semiotic resources. This paper examines these cases within Wahlin’s CHaSSMM Model (Wahlin 2015), which combines social semiotics with multimodality and critical hermeneutics. CHaSSMM’s potential is making explicit the project’s underlying power structures and meaning potential of multimodal, semiotic resources. It begins with an overview of the pediatric health education case studies and the CHaSSMM Model of analysis, and then explains how CHaSSMM can provide support for the planning and interpretive stages of design projects.