Health Literacy Resources

News Items

New Federal Policy Initiatives To Boost Health Literacy Can Help The Nation Move Beyond The Cycle Of Costly 'Crisis Care', Jan. 2012

 Attributes of a Health Literate Organization [PDF], paper from the Insitute of Medicine

CDC launches new website: Health Literacy: Accurate, Accessible and Actionable Health Information for All

National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy—Plan and summary released May 2010 by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

Health Literacy as a Universal Precaution—Toolkit created by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

The ASHA Leader Articles

• Health Literacy in Clinical Practice
• Health Literacy: Improving Web and Print Materials
• Health Literacy at the Intersection of Cultures
• Health Literacy: Research Directions for Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology
• Health Literacy: The Cornerstone of Patient Safety

Health Literacy Information

• National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
• The National Library of Medicine's Current Bibliographies in Medicine: Understanding Health Literacy and its Barriers (651 citations)
• Harvard University Health Literacy Page
• Joint Commission public policy paper on health literacy
• Communicating Health: Priorities and Strategies for Progress
• Focus on Basics: Connecting Research and Practice, a quarterly publication of the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy
• Outreach and Technical Assistance Network (OTAN)
• National Library of Medicine health literacy citations
• The International Alliance of Patients' Organizations' articles and resources including for patient education
• The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) health literacy information
• Institute of Medicine Health Literacy information
• NIH Improving Health Literacy Page
• The Administration on Aging and the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion of the US Department of Health and Human Services health literacy resources
• Hospitals and Health Networks Magazine article: The Price of Poor Literacy
• U.S. Department of Education State and County Estimates of Low Literacy
• Access Audiology article on Health Literacy

Online Tutorials

• Health Literacy and Public Health—New York/New Jersey Public Health Training Center
• National Institutes of Health Plain Language Training
• PlainTrain—Plain Language Online Training Program
• Unified Health Communication 101: Addressing Health Literacy, Cultural Competency, and Limited English Proficiency—Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)

Resources for Teaching

• American Medical Association (AMA): Health Literacy: A Manual for Clinicians [PDF, 1.6MB]
• Health Literacy Consulting
• ERIC Practice Brief exploring the health-literacy connection and describes practices for embedding health education and promotion into adult literacy programs [PDF]
• American Medical Association Foundation Low Health Literacy: You can't tell by looking
• Executive Summary of the American College of Physicians (ACP) Foundation's Fifth Annual National Health Communication Conference, Moving Toward Real Solutions: Advances to Address Low Health Literacy [PDF, 2MB]

Cultural Competence

• Self Assessment for Cultural Competence
• ASHA Office of Multicultural Affairs
• Special Interest Group 14, Communication Disorders and Sciences in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Populations, publishes articles on consumer health education in its member newsletter, specifically including the importance of sensitivity to cultural differences.
• National Center for Cultural Competence