Optimising health communications

The difference between a letter that ends up in the bin and one that prompts someone to join a clinical trial is often a matter of small, testable design choices. A trial logo. A named signatory. A reference to the recipient's GP. How those choices add up determines who gets recruited, how fast, and whether the sample reflects the population the research is meant to serve.

We run an ongoing programme of communications testing for NHS England and NHS DigiTrials, combining behavioural science with methods designed to capture both fast instinctive reactions and considered preferences. This has included Implicit Association Tests to understand how letter format shapes perceptions of trust and motivation, A/B tests of different nudges (e.g. pre-existing condition reassurance, GP recommendation, incentives, demographically tailored messages), and a creative proxy study that launched a yoga app via Instagram to test clinical trial recruitment nudges in a real-world setting. The findings have produced specific, implementable recommendations on letter design, wording, nudges and channel choice, with particular attention to what works for under-represented groups.

For Our Future Health, we designed the public and patient engagement to inform recontact communications for one of the UK's largest health research programmes. Reconvened workshops explored how participants want to be invited to recall-by-phenotype and recall-by-genotype studies, covering obesity, vaping, diabetes and depression, and amyloidosis. The work produced design principles on staged information, named senders, visual formats and timing that are now shaping how Our Future Health communicates with its five million participants.