Resources: Health Literacy Resources

Health literacy is one of the seven public health priorities identified by the Office of the Surgeon General, housed within the Department of Health and Human Services. The National AgrAbility Project (NAP) and the State and Regional AgrAbility Projects (SRAPs) have an opportunity to promote awareness and create solutions that improve the health outcomes for people in rural America.

Building partnerships

NAP is working with the Partnership for Clear Health Communication (PCHC) to increase awareness of health literacy issues. PCHC is the first national non-profit coalition of organizations working together to promote awareness and solutions to the issue of low health literacy and its effect on health outcomes. PCHC offers free and low-cost resources that deliver information and medical education to patients and professional staff. PCHC conducted a health literacy session at the 2005 National AgrAbility Training Workshop in November in support of this initiative. For more information on PCHC, please visit http://www.askme3.org.

Color logo of the Partnership for Clear Health Communication with interlocking speech balloons

NAP has also developed a National Health Care Organizations webpage, http://www.agrabilityproject.org/resources/, which provides access to comprehensive information about common health care conditions affecting AgrAbility clients.

Raising awareness

Raising awareness about health literacy among AgrAbility staff and clients is important and may be accomplished by including the message of health literacy in written resources and outreach materials. Another way staff and clients can learn more about health literacy is by watching Low Health Literacy: You Can't Tell By Looking , a video produced by the American Medical Association, available at http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/8035.html.

A patient education program, Ask Me 3 created by PCHC, may be a simple yet valuable resource to share with clients. It promotes three essential questions that clients should ask their providers (physicians, nurses, occupational/physical therapists, etc.) during every health care interaction:

1. What is my main problem?

2. What do I need to do?

3. Why is it important for me to do this?

Tips on developing resources

By understanding that low health literacy is an issue for many rural Americans, resources can be developed that are written at a lower literacy level. In keeping resources near an 8 th grade readability level, there is a greater likelihood that the informational materials will be understood and used. One method to assess the reading level of written materials is to use readability tests. Several readability tests are available free of charge, such as:

SMOG readability formula -- http://www.cdc.gov/od/ads/smog.htm
Flesch-Kincaid formula, automatically generated in Microsoft Word -- search for Readability in Word Help

Large print resources for those with visual impairments and materials published in multiple languages are useful, especially when serving a diverse population. Several websites offer free document and webpage translation services. One source is AltaVista’s Babel Fish Translation at http://world.altavista.com/.

It is suggested that a person fluent in the translated language review the document before it is published.

For more information and resources, please visit the websites in the previous section.

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In This Issue
Section 1: Client Story Section 2: Focus Section 3: Assistive Technology Notes	Section 4: State Project Feature Section 5: References Section 6: Contacts