BACKGROUND
Person- or patient-centered language is the American Medical Association recommended style for addressing patients in research or other written settings to prevent stigmatization in clinical contexts. Using stigmatizing language in this context has been shown to present detrimental effects and is associated with poorer health outcomes. A growing corpus of research has found non-person-centered language in clinical and other academic journals is shockingly prevalent. In a foundational case, a sampling of clinical trials from 2018-2020 regarding alcohol use disorder found more than 68% contained stigmatizing terminology for outcomes and processes (Hartwell et al. 2020). Reducing the occurrence of non-patient centered language to decrease the stigmatization of medical conditions is critically necessary to prevent social stigmas from creeping into clinical settings and practices.
SUMMARY OF TECHNOLOGY
Researchers at OSU have developed a web-based program that functions to seek stigmatizing language in a document to assist individuals and organizations in promoting respectful and inclusive language usage in communications. More specifically, this software can run language against a set of pre-compiled lists from selected institutions which have defined stigmatizing labels among served populations, such as the American Medical Association Manual of Style and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’ Guidelines as well as employing natural language processing techniques. Additionally, users can add and remove terms from lists, submitting new language to be included in the main lists, contributing to shareable lists from other users, enabling collaboration as well as notes explaining the rationale for term additions. Designed to be customizable, the program has a broad functionality for groups or organizations by allowing the definition of their own criteria and suggested alternative language. This innovative program will promote more respectful and inclusive language use among individuals and organizations across many languages both within the medical community and outside it, reducing the verifiable harm that occurs when social stigma invades clinical spaces.
POTENTIAL AREAS OF APPLICATION
MAIN ADVANTAGES
STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT