Article Published on Testing of New AHRQ Tool that Assesses Patient Education Materials

Article Published on Testing of New AHRQ Tool that Assesses Patient Education Materials



A new AHRQ tool helps health professionals and others select educational materials that are easy for patients to understand and use. The tool is discussed in a recent journal article, co-authored by AHRQ’s Cindy Brach, “Development of the Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool (PEMAT): A new measure of understandability and actionability for print and audiovisual patient information.” Published in the September issue of Patient Education and Counseling, this article reports on the development and reliability as well as validity testing of the PEMAT to assess whether print and audiovisual patient education materials are easy to understand and use. The PEMAT and Users’ Guide—along with a PEMAT Auto-Scoring Form—are available at: http://www.ahrq.gov/pemat. A user-friendly tool that requires no training, the PEMAT advances HHS’s National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy’s goal to “develop and disseminate health and safety information that is accurate, accessible, and actionable.”