National Prevention Summit
October 27, 2006

1. The health literacy agenda should expand beyond plain language and patient-provider communication to include systems change.
2. Health professionals can be effective advocates for health literacy improvement within their organizations.

Why Is Health Literacy Important?

(image: diagram titled "Percentage of Adults in Each Literacy Level: 2003" illustrates the total number of adults with Basic or Below Basic health literacy to be over 80 million)

(image: diagram titled "Difficulty of selected health literacy tasks" illustrates the average user has difficulty determining what time a person can take a prescription medication, based on information on the drug label that relates the timing of medication to eating)

Characteristic	Percent Below Basic population	Percent in total population
Did not graduate from high school	51	15
Did not speak English before starting school	39	13
Adults reporting poor health	10	4
Hispanic adults	35	12
Age 65+	31	15
No medical insurance	36	18
Did not obtain health information over the internet1	80	43
Black adults	19	12
One or more diabilities2	48	30

1 The "Did not obtain health information over the Internet" category does not include prison inmates because they do not have access to the Internet.
2 Disabilities include vision, hearing, learning disability, and other health problems.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL).

(image: diagram titled "Health literacy level and self-assessment of overall health" illustrating a parallel between level of health literacy and self-assessment of overall health; the lower the level, the poorer the overall health)

Source: National Center for Education Statistics, Institute for Education Sciences

Health Literacy at HHS

• 11-2. Improve the health literacy of persons with inadequate or marginal literacy skills.
• 11-6. Increase the proportion of persons who report that their healthcare providers have satisfactory communication skills.

• Communication skills of the public and health professionals
• Knowledge of health-related topics
• Culture
• Demands of the healthcare and public health systems
• Demands of the situation/context

• Basic overview of key health literacy concepts
• Techniques for improving health literacy
• Examples of health literacy best practices
• Suggestions for addressing health literacy in your organization

Strategies for Improving Health Literacy

• Is the information appropriate for the users?
• Is it easy to understand?
• Are you speaking clearly and listening carefully?

• Improve the usability of health forms and instructions.
• Improve accessibility of the physical environment.
• Establish a patient navigator program.

• Improve access to accurate and appropriate health information.
• Facilitate healthy decision-making.
• Partner with adult and K-12 educators.

• Change professional practice.
• Make the case for improving health literacy to management and colleagues.
• Establish accountability in your organization.

www.health.gov/communication/literacy

Contact Information:
Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
(240) 453-8280