Health Literacy | Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality

Health Literacy

Health literacy occurs when health information and services created for the public match with people’s capacity to find, understand, and use them. AHRQ's health literacy resources help health care professionals and delivery organizations make information easier to understand and systems easier to navigate.

Tools for Health Care Professionals, Delivery Organizations, and Systems

AHRQ Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit, 2nd edition

The AHRQ Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit, 2nd edition and companion implementation guide help adult and pediatric practices reduce the complexity of health care, increase patient understanding of health information, and enhance support for patients of all health literacy levels. Also available is a crosswalk showing how implementing health literacy tools can help meet standards for patient-centered medical home certification or recognition.

AHRQ Pharmacy Health Literacy Center

The Pharmacy Health Literacy Center hosts modules for pharmacy faculty and six pharmacy health literacy tools.

Re-Engineered Discharge Toolkit

The Re-Engineered Discharge (RED) Toolkit helps re-design the discharge process, particularly for hospitals that serve diverse populations, to reduce readmissions and post-hospital emergency department visits.

Taking Care of Myself: A Guide for When I Leave the Hospital

Based on the RED Toolkit's easy-to-understand discharge plan Taking Care of Myself: A Guide for When I Leave the Hospital, this fillable PDF allows patients to record information they need to remember about appointments and medicines and how to care for themselves when they get home.

AHRQ Health Care Innovations Exchange

The Innovations Exchange is a searchable repository of innovations and tools to improve quality and reduce disparities. To find innovations and tools related to health literacy select "health literacy" as a search term or browse by subject.

Help Your Patients Engage in Their Health Care

AHRQ patient engagement resources for guides and toolkits for hospitals and primary care settings.

TalkingQuality: Translate Data Into Information

This section of TalkingQuality discusses how to turn health care quality data into information that meets the needs of your audience.

Health Literacy and Patient and Family Engagement: Strategic Tools To Prevent CAUTI

The Health Literacy and Patient and Family Engagement: Strategic Tools To Prevent CAUTI presentation describes the importance of addressing health literacy in preventing catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) and summarizes ways to engage patients and families in CAUTI prevention.

Professional Education and Training

Advancing Pharmacy Health Literacy Practices Through Quality Improvement

These Advancing Pharmacy Health Literacy Practices Through Quality Improvement modules help pharmacy faculty integrate health literacy and health literacy quality improvement into courses, experiential education, and projects for PharmD students and pharmacy residents. Also available is an in-service curriculum: Strategies To Improve Communication Between Pharmacy Staff and Patients: Training Program for Pharmacy Staff

Health Literacy Modules

Pediatricians and family physicians can earn credit for recertification by taking the Health Literacy Knowledge Self-Assessment Module (MOC Part 2) or Improve Health Literacy Performance Improvement Modules (MOC Part 4) through the American Board of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians. OptumHealth Education (moreinfo@optumhealtheducation.com) is issuing continuing education for taking the health literacy modules. Contact Healthliteracy@AHRQ.HHS.gov if you would like to host these modules for MOC or CME/CE credit.

AHRQ's Making Informed Consent an Informed Choice: Training Modules for Health Care Leaders and Professionals

cover of the Implementation Guide for AHRQ's Making Informed Consent an Informed Choice

The two AHRQ's Making Informed Consent an Informed Choice: Training Modules for Health Care Leaders and Professionals interactive training modules teach strategies that health care organizations and clinical teams can use to ensure that people understand their alternatives, including the option of not having any treatment. To learn about earning continuing education and continuing medical education via The Joint Commission's learning management system, visit The Joint Commission—Improving the Informed Consent Process in the Hospital Setting

The SHARE Approach

The SHARE Approach, a train-the-trainer curriculum, supports the training of health care professionals on how to engage patients in their health care decisionmaking. Health literacy tools include: Health Literacy and Shared Decisionmaking: A Reference Guide for Health Care Providers and Communicating Numbers to Your Patients: A Reference Guide for Health Care Providers.

TeamSTEPPS® Limited English Proficiency Module

The TeamSTEPPS® Limited English Proficiency Module train-the-trainer curriculum includes everything you need to train clinicians and interpreters to work as a team. The publication Improving Patient Safety Systems for Patients With Limited English Proficiency: A Guide for Hospitals helps organizations prepare for the TeamSTEPPS limited English proficiency module.

Patient Education Resources

Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool

The Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool is a systematic method to evaluate and compare the understandability and actionability of print and audiovisual patient education materials.

The Center for Advancing Equity in Clinical Preventive Services | Northwestern University

The AHRQ-funded Northwestern Center of Excellence for Clinical Preventive Services

developed and tested interventions and patient education materials to reduce disparities in clinical preventive services by focusing on health literacy, health communication, quality improvement methods, and health information technology.

Effective Health Care Program

AHRQ's Effective Health Care Program includes patient decision aids that help patients consider both the research evidence and what is important to them when talking with their clinician about treatment options. Also available are free research summaries about the benefits and risks of different treatments for various health conditions.

Assessing the Patient Experience

Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Items Sets for Addressing Health Literacy

AHRQ has produced three Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS®) health literacy item sets to assess health care providers' activities to foster and improve the health literacy of patients and give providers information that can help them improve their health literacy practices. Survey items are available for clinician/groups, hospitals, and health plan in English and Spanish. Learn about using HCAHPS results and how to calculate composite measures in About the CAHPS® Health Literacy Item Set for Hospitals.

CAHPS® Cultural Competence

The CAHPS Cultural Competence Item Set is a supplement to the Clinician/Group CAHPS designed to capture the patient's perspective on the cultural competence of health care providers. Learn about using the survey results and how to calculate composite measures in About the CAHPS® Cultural Competence Item Set. Items on interpreter services are also available for Adult Hospital CAHPS.

Improve Patients' Experiences

Resources to help hospitals improve the patient experience.

Health Information Technology

Accessible Health Information Technology (IT) for Populations with Limited Literacy: A Guide for Developers and Purchasers of Health IT

The Accessible Health Information Technology (IT) for Populations with Limited Literacy: A Guide for Developers and Purchasers of Health IT guide and checklist help developers and purchasers ensure that the health IT they create and implement is easy to use by populations with limited literacy. An evaluation of the guide is also available.

Health Information Technology Initiative

AHRQ has funded many grants that have resulted in publications related to health literacy. Search the AHRQ health IT portfolio using keywords such as "literacy" and "communication."

Tools for Researchers

Informed Consent and Authorization Toolkit for Minimal Risk Research

The Informed Consent and Authorization Toolkit for Minimal Risk Research toolkit helps both researchers and institutional review boards ensure that potential subjects can make well-informed decisions about participating in research studies.

Health Literacy Measurement Tools

AHRQ-funded researchers have developed four tools to measure an aspect of health literacy—individuals' reading comprehension in a medical context—to detect health literacy disparities and examine interventions’ effects on populations with limited health literacy.

Data

AHRQ's Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) collects data for three Healthy People 2020 health literacy measures. Researchers can conduct their own analyses of the data, which comes from the MEPS' household component's Self-Administered Questionnaire (SAQ) that has been collected annually since 2011 and is part of the MEPS Full Year Consolidated File. Researchers can download the file from the MEPS Download Data page.

Articles, Papers, and Reports

Advances in Patient Safety

This AHRQ-published volume of government-sponsored patient safety research includes the following articles related to health literacy.

Peer-Reviewed Articles, Book Chapters, and Reports

AHRQ researchers have published the following articles related to health literacy in peer-reviewed journals

A daughter's frustration with the dearth of patient- and family-centered care
Crossing the language chasm
Even in an emergency, doctors must make informed consent an informed choice
New federal policy initiatives to boost health literacy can help the nation move beyond the cycle of costly 'crisis care'
Physicians' roles in creating health literate organizations: a call to action
A proposed 'health literate care model' would constitute a systems approach to improving patients’ engagement in care (Also see interactive graphic of the Health Literate Care Model.)
Chapter 5: Improving Patient Education With EHRs (in Health Information Technology in the United States: Better Information Systems for Better Care, 2013)
Integrating Health Literacy into Patient Safety Partnerships (in Engaging Patients as Safety Partners: A Guide for Reducing Errors and Improving Satisfaction)
Integrating literacy, culture, and language to improve health care quality for diverse populations

America's Health Literacy: Why We Need Accessible Health Information

This brief America’s Health Literacy: Why We Need Accessible Health Information, co-authored by researchers from AHRQ and the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, summarizes key findings and presents some policy implications of health literacy data from the National Assessment of Adult Literacy.

Health Literacy Interventions and Outcomes: A Systematic Review

The report Health Literacy Interventions and Outcomes: A Systematic Review is an update of a 2004 systematic review of research on health care service use and health outcomes related to differences in health literacy level and interventions designed to improve these outcomes for individuals with low health literacy.

National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Roundtable on Health Literacy

As a sponsor of the National Academies' Roundtable on Health Literacy

, AHRQ supported the production of these papers and workshops:

In addition, an AHRQ researcher led the production of Ten Attributes of Health Literate Health Care Organizations

National Healthcare Quality & Disparities Reports

cover for the 2014 National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report Chartbook on Person- and Family-Centered Care

The National Healthcare Quality & Disparities Reports measure trends in effectiveness of care, patient safety, timeliness of care, patient centeredness, and efficiency of care, including the quality of provider-patient communication.

Project Research Online Database

The Project Research Online Database is a searchable database of more than 4,000 AHRQ-funded projects and more than 300 working papers authored by AHRQ grantees. Use keywords to search for projects related to health literacy.

Podcasts and Videos

Impact Case Studies

AHRQ's Impact Case Studies describe the use and impact of AHRQ-funded tools by State and Federal policymakers, health systems, clinicians, academicians, and other professionals. Choose the topic "health literacy" to find case studies.

Related Department of Health and Human Services Resources

Clear Communication (National Institutes of Health)
Healthfinder.gov
Health Literacy (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Health Literacy and Communication (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion)
Health Literacy (Health Resources and Services Administration)
MedlinePlus Easy-to-Read (National Library of Medicine)
MedlinePlus Health Information in Multiple Languages
Plain Language: Getting Started or Brushing Up (National Institutes of Health)
Risk Communication (Food and Drug Administration)
Think Cultural Health (Office of Minority Health)
Toolkit for Making Written Material Clear and Effective (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services)

Page last reviewed April 2017
Page originally created March 2017

Internet Citation: Health Literacy. Content last reviewed April 2017. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/professionals/clinicians-providers/resources/health-literacy.html