LibGuides: Northwell/ZSOM Health Equity: Health Literacy

What is health literacy?

Personal health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the ability to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others.
Organizational health literacy is the degree to which organizations equitably enable individuals to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others.

What is Health Literacy, CDC

Demand to Understand: How Plain Language Makes Life Simpler

Updating Health Literacy for Healthy People 2030

Health Literacy Resources

Communicating Risks and Benefits: An Evidence-Based User's Guide by Baruch Fischhoff, Noel T. Brewer, & Julie S. Downs, editors
Publication Date: 2011
Effective risk communication is essential to the well-being of any organization and those people who depend on it. Ineffective communication can cost lives, money, and reputations. Communicating Risks and Benefits: An Evidence-Based User's Guide provides the scientific foundations for effective communication.
Health Literacy in Nursing by Terri Ann Parnell
ISBN: 9780826161727
Publication Date: 2014-07-01
Northwell Access
ZSOM Access
Promoting the health literacy of patients across all settings is an essential component of prevention, wellness, and effective medical treatment. This health literacy textbook provides an overview of health literacy, discusses the magnitude of the issue, and explains implications of low health literacy. It details strategies to enhance effective communication between patients and nursing practitioners. Through case-based examples, this textbook and clinical guide assists nurses in developing the requisite skills needed to communicate effectively so that patients can truly make informed health decisions and enhance health outcomes.
Practical Patient Literacy by Melissa N. Stewart
ISBN: 9780071761314
Publication Date: 2012-03-05
Northwell Access
ZSOM Access
In this unique guide, Dr. Melissa Stewart explains her patient-centered Medagogy conceptual framework, which tracks the flow of information throughout the patient education process, from information to delivery to action. Not only does the Medagogy model help patients understand their illness and become their own best healthcare advocate, it is the cornerstone of effective multidisciplinary patient education.
Strategic Urban Health Communication by Charles Okigbo (Editor)
ISBN: 9781461493341
Publication Date: 2013-12-06
Northwell Access
ZSOM Access
People are bombarded with messages continuously and sorting through them constantly. In this milieu, critical ideas about health promotion and illness prevention are forced to compete with distracting, conflicting, even contradictory information. To get vital messages through, communication must be effective, targeted, artful--in a word, strategic. Strategic Urban Health Communication provides a road map for understanding strategy, enhancing strategic planning skills, and implementing strategic communication campaigns.
Transparent Communication of Health Risks by Rocio Garcia-Retamero (Editor); Mirta Galesic (Editor)
ISBN: 9781461443582
Publication Date: 2013-01-09
Northwell Access
ZSOM Access
Transparent Communication of Health Risks describes a series of cross-cultural studies investigating how people in countries with different medical and educational systems understand numerical and graphical information, what they know about existing medical treatments and screenings, which presentation formats help them better understand the relevant information, and how they use the data to make medical decisions. Focusing on the careful measurement of necessary knowledge and skills, the book also includes validated numeracy and graph literacy scales in English, Spanish, and German.

Health Literacy Research and Practice
Open access.
Health Communication
Northwell Access
ZSOM Access
15 month embargo
American Journal of Health Education
Northwell Access
ZSOM Access
15 month embargo
Global Journal of Health Education & Promotion
Northwell Access
ZSOM Access
Formerly International Electronic Journal of Health Education.
Health Education & Behavior
Northwell Access
ZSOM Access
Health Education Journal
Northwell Access
ZSOM Access
Health Education Research
Northwell Access
ZSOM Access

Search these point-of-care tools for downloadable images for patient education.

5MinuteConsult
Northwell Access
ZSOM Access
A resource that provides diagnosis, treatment, and management information on the most frequently observed diseases and conditions. Mobile app available.
ClinicalKey
Northwell Access
ZSOM Access
A comprehensive medical information service from Elsevier providing fulltext access to over 1,000 textbooks, Clinics of North America, journals, practice guidelines, images and procedures videos, patient education materials, free CEU credit resources and drug information. Search across all content or filter via format or topic.

General Resources

A Model Collaboration to Develop a Health Literate Care Curriculum
Commentary on health literacy education at ZSOM.
Health Literacy - health.gov
health.gov creates, promotes, and curates evidence-based health literacy and communication tools, practices, and research for health professionals.
Health Equity Guiding Principles for Inclusive Communication - CDC
Using Narrative Communication as a Tool for Health Behavior Change: A Conceptual, Theoretical, and Empirical Overview
This article defines narrative communication and describes the rationale for using it in health-promotion programs, reviews theoretical explanations of narrative effects and research comparing narrative and nonnarrative approaches to persuasion, and makes recommendations for future research needs in narrative health communication.
Health Literacy - HRSA
To support staff and providers, HRSA’s Office of Health Equity, in coordination with other Bureaus and Offices, provides tailored training to health care professionals so that they can identify the specific health literacy levels of their patients and make simple communication changes.
Roundtable on Health Literacy
Repository of publications from the roundtable. The Roundtable on Health Literacy envisions a society in which the demands of the health and health care systems are respectful of and aligned with people’s skills, abilities, and values. The mission of the Roundtable is to inform, inspire, and activate a wide variety of stakeholders to support the development, implementation, and sharing of evidence-based health literacy practices and policies. The goal is to improve the health and well-being of all people.
Ten Attributes of Health Literate Health Care Organizations - AHRQ

Plain Language

plainlanguage.gov
The Plain Language Action and Information Network (PLAIN) developed and continues to revise The Federal Plain Language Guidelines to provide updated advice on clear communication.
Plain Language Materials & Resources - CDC
Everyday Words for Public Health Communication
Everyday Words for Public Health Communication offers expert recommendations from CDC's Health Literacy Council and other agency communicators on how to reduce jargon and improve reader understanding. You can search for public health jargon or plain language words and find alternatives and example sentences.

Visual Communication

Visual Communication Resources - CDC
Using pictures to convey health information: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects on patient and consumer health behaviors and outcomes
Article in Patient Education and Counseling. Pictures in health information improve knowledge/understanding and recall. This effect is larger for individuals with lower health literacy. Icons with few words may be most helpful.
Graphics help patients distinguish between urgent and non-urgent deviations in laboratory test results
Article in Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. Unlike tables, which only tell patients whether test results are normal or not, visual displays can increase the meaningfulness of test results by clearly defining possible values and leveraging color cues and evaluative labels.

Evaluation

Personal Health Literacy Measurement Tools
Personal health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the ability to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others. AHRQ-funded researchers have developed tools to measure an aspect of personal health literacy—individuals' reading comprehension in a medical context.
Health Literacy Tool Shed
Database of health literacy measures.
The Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool (PEMAT) and User’s Guide
The Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool (PEMAT) is a systematic method to evaluate and compare the understandability and actionability of patient education materials. It is designed as a guide to help determine whether patients will be able to understand and act on information. Separate tools are available for use with print and audiovisual materials.

AHRQ Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit
This toolkit provides evidence-based guidance to adult and pediatric practices to ensure that systems are in place to promote better understanding by all patients, not just those you think need extra assistance.
Health Literacy Training - CDC
plainlanguage.gov
The Plain Language Action and Information Network (PLAIN) developed and continues to revise The Federal Plain Language Guidelines to provide updated advice on clear communication.
Plain Language at NIH
Rural Health Literacy Toolkit
This toolkit compiles evidence-based and promising models and resources to support organizations implementing programs to improve health literacy in rural communities across the United States.