What is Health Literacy and why is it important?
Resources for implementing a Health Literacy Program
General literacy resources
What is Health Literacy and why is it important? (back to top)
AMA Foundation: Health Literacy News
News and information related to health literacy issues from AMA and non-AMA sources.
Ask Me 3™
A trademark licensed to the Partnership for Clear Health Communication, a national, non-profit coalition working to build awareness and advance solutions to improve health literacy and positively impact health outcomes.
The Health Literacy of America’s Adults: Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy
The Health Literacy of America’s Adults is the first release of the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) health literacy results. The results are based on assessment tasks designed specifically to measure the health literacy of adults living in the United States.
Healthy People 2010
An initiative from Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). Hyperlinked table of contents for latest editions of Volumes 1 & 2. Documents the statistical basis for the initiative and provides guidance for its implementation.
Information Literacy and Consumer Health
White Paper prepared for UNESCO, the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, and the National Forum on Information Literacy, for use at the Literacy Meeting of Experts, Prague, The Czech Republic.
Quick Guide to Health Literacy
From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a 36 page document that includes fact sheets, strategies, and resources and “is for government employees, grantees and contractors, and community partners working in healthcare and public health fields.” See http://www.health.gov/communication/literacy/quickguide/ for more information.
Resources for implementing a Health Literacy program (back to top)
Clear & Simple: Developing Effective Print Materials for Low-Literate Readers
A Service of the National Cancer Institute, this guide outlines a process for developing publications for people with limited-literacy skills and includes a section titled “Low-Literacy Publications and Software.”
Health & Literacy Special Collection: Teaching & Learning Health Literacy Skills
From World Education with support from the National Institute for Literacy LINCS Project. Provides web and print-based health materials for use with low-literacy adults. Included are resources about books, reports and journals on what low health literacy is, how to assess and develop plain language materials, and curricula for use in literacy classrooms and community settings.
Health Information Translations
A collaborative initiative by several organizations including the American Medical Association Foundation and The Ohio State University Medical Center. Designed to improve health education for limited English proficiency patients, this is a keyword searchable database of patient education handouts in many languages including American Sign Language.
General literacy resources (back to top)
America’s Literacy Directory
Connects employers, learners, volunteers, social service providers, and others to current information about literacy programs in all 50 states and the U.S. territories.
Fry Readability Graph and Directions
Reproduced with permission from Fry, Edward. Elementary Reading Instruction. ©1977. The McGraw-Hill Companies.
ProLiteracy America
The U.S. division of ProLiteracy Worldwide, which “champions the life-changing benefits of literacy for adults and their families, by sponsoring educational programs that help adults and their families acquire the literacy practices and skills they need to function more effectively in their daily lives.”
