Health Literacy

The purpose of this Toolkit is to provide evidence-based guidance to support primary care practices in addressing health literacy. The Toolkit can help practices reduce the complexity of health care, increase patient understanding of health information, and enhance support for patients of all literacy levels. The Toolkit comprises 21 tools addressing 4 domains that are important for promoting health literacy in your practice:
1. Spoken Communication
2. Written Communication
3. Self-Management and Empowerment
4. Supportive Systems
The Toolkit appendix contains over 30 resources, such as sample forms, PowerPoint presentations, and worksheets that practices may use or revise to suit their needs. For a complete list of tools and appendices, go to the Table of Contents.

From the CDC, resources available on assessing your organization for health literacy.

This guide and the review tools found within it offer an approach for analyzing literacy-related barriers to healthcare access and navigation. This guide was designed to assist chief executive officers, presidents, program directors, administrators, and healthcare workers at hospitals or health centers to consider the health literacy environment of their healthcare facilities and to analyze ways to reduce demands, to better serve their patients and staff and ultimately to increase revenue.

This is an update to the Rudd and Anderson Health Literacy Environment of Hospitals and Health Centers. This revised tool (HLE2) enables you to identify and rate literacy related factors within your organization. Findings will support efforts to improve health literacy by initiating action, identifying and acting on priority areas, and measuring change over time.

This tool was updated by Dr. Rima Rudd, Sandy Oelschlegel, Kelsey Leonard Grabeel, Emily Tester, and Eric Heidel.

In order to download the tool, you must complete the HLE2 Access Page questions. Once complete, the tool will be available for download.