Assess Health Literacy in Your Organization

Your organization can’t address its health literacy issues if it doesn’t know its current situation. It’s easy to make assumptions, but you need data. Do an honest assessment to identify opportunities and barriers to make progress on health literacy.

As you conduct your assessment, engage multiple interested parties, and choose from these tools to help you get started.

Resources for Organizations

Public health organizations and their partners, as well as clinical care groups, may find the following resources to be helpful. There’s still a need to help organizations address health literacy issues for the people they serve.

General Assessment Tools

Train the workforce

See our Find Training page for training opportunities in health literacy, plain language, and culture and communication

Develop materials that are easy to understand and act on

See Develop Materials for additional guidance and resources for preparing materials to address health literacy.

Meet the needs of audiences with a range of health literacy skills

Provide easy access to health information and services

See the resources below for information about accessible and usable health information, including websites.

See the resources below for information on how to improve the readability of consent forms and other print materials for participants in health care research.

See Evaluate Skills & Programs for assessment tools to identify health literacy issues in your organization.

Communicate clearly during crises and emergencies

 

Page last reviewed: October 17, 2019