Judge: Plain Language Champion — Best Organisation

Executive Director, enliven, Melbourne, Australia

Cinzia has worked in the health sector for 25 years. Currently working with culturally diverse communities experiencing significant disadvantage, Cinzia understands the value of plain language in health messaging to ensure information is accessible and understood by all. Throughout the pandemic it was very clear that COVID-19 messaging was not resonating with many culturally diverse communities. Cinzia’s organisation, enliven, immediately identified the need for plain language, culturally appropriate resources that could simply and easily communicate messages about social distancing, self-isolation, importance of vaccination, lockdown regulations, and also how to stay safe and connected during the pandemic.

Health literacy relates to how people access, understand, and use health information in ways that benefit their health. People with low health literacy are at higher risk of worse health outcomes and poorer health behaviours. enliven supports multiple organisations to meet the health literacy needs of their communities. Cinzia’s team develop, tailor, and deliver online plain language training to build capacity amongst the health and social services sectors and to actively promote the use of plain language. Cinzia thoroughly enjoys taking complex messaging and converting it to plain language. She is privileged to have access to a vast number of community members who community test each resource and constantly enrich the end product.

In 2021, enliven was very proud to have won the Christine Mowat International Plain Language Award for their work during the pandemic. Cinzia’s plain language advocacy efforts didn’t end there and her passion for plain language, particularly in the health sector, continues to grow. On hearing about the future release of an ISO Plain Language Standard, Cinzia and other members of her team volunteer their time to sit on various International Plain Language Federation and Australian Standards Working Groups for localisation of the standards. Cinzia sees this work as an absolute privilege and enjoys working with so many very talented plain language professionals from across the world. Cinzia is a proud member of PLAIN, the Plain Language Association International.

Meet the judges for the Plain Language Awards

How the judging process works