Using personas as an intermediate construct in the development of tailored messages: a Case Study

Tailoring health education messages to patients' preferences for message style is believed to increase patients' susceptibility to the given advice. This paper presents a persona-centered approach towards creating tailored health messages for chronically ill patients. A case study of tailoring messages to the preferences of patients with coronary heart disease illustrates the approach and shows the need for patient-centered data collection so that personas reflect patients' preferences. Based on these personas, a manageable set of tailored messages can be created in a step-by-step approach.