Celebrated each October, Health Literacy Month is the perfect time to take action to advance health literacy in your organization and in your community. Healthy People 2030 identifies health literacy as a social determinant of health, or a key non-medical factor that affects health, well-being, and quality of life. That’s why every health professional and organization has a responsibility to improve health literacy.
Early conceptions of health literacy only focused on personal health literacy, which is defined as 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. Today, we recognize that health literacy isn’t just a personal responsibility. After all, people are more likely to struggle with health information when they’re navigating unnecessarily complex health care systems or digital tools.
To acknowledge the role that institutions that produce health information and provide health services play in improving health literacy, Healthy People 2030 also provides a definition for organizational health literacy. Organizational health literacy is the degree to which organizations enable individuals to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others. Strengthening organizational health literacy means understanding that health literacy is contextual, and that removing barriers to understanding empowers people to make informed decisions about their health. By designing products and systems supporting health literacy, health organizations can help foster personal health literacy in the patients or community members they support.
ODPHP has created and curated evidenced-based resources that you can use to build both personal and organizational health literacy. Here are just a few highlights:
- MyHealthfinder features personalized preventive care recommendations and simple, expert-backed health information on more than 100 topics in English and Spanish. Share the MyHealthfinder website or add MyHealthfinder content to your own website to empower people to make informed health decisions.
- Health Literacy Online provides research-based guidelines for creating websites and digital tools that provide actionable and usable health information, even for those with limited personal health literacy.
- The Health Literate Care Model offers a systems framework to help health organizations integrate health literacy strategies into all aspects of care to improve patient care and health outcomes.
Visit the Health Literacy Month page for social media posts, graphics, and newsletter or blog content to help promote Health Literacy Month to your network.
