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 for patients. I will say the National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy is the best that aim to occupy organizations, professionals, policymakers, communities, individuals, and families in allied, different-sector effort to advance and recover health literacy by making sure everyone has the right of vital information to make health decisions and health services should deliver in ways that are clean and clear (black and white). The body of Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) identified 10 attributes of health literate healthcare organizations.
A health literate healthcare organization:
- Has leadership that makes health literacy integral to its mission, structure, and operations.
- Integrates health literacy into planning, evaluation measures, patient safety, and quality improvement.
- Prepares the workforce to be health literate and monitors progress.
- Includes populations served in the design, implementation, and evaluation of health information and services.
- Meets the needs of populations with a range of health literacy skills while avoiding stigmatization.
- Uses health literacy strategies in interpersonal communications and confirms understanding at all points of contact.
- Provides easy access to health information and services and navigation assistance.
- Designs and distributes print, audiovisual, and social media content that is easy to understand and act on.
- Addresses health literacy in high-risk situations, including care transitions and communications about medicines.
- Communicates clearly what health plans cover and what individuals will have to pay for services.
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (n.d.). Ten Attributes of Health Literate Health Care Organizations. Retrieved from https://www.ahrq.gov/professionals/quality-patient-safety/quality-resources/tools/literacy/ten-attributes.html
Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (n.d.) Health Literacy. Retrieved June 21, 2015 from http://www.health.gov/communication/literacy/
