Adirondack Rural Health Network

Tools for Organizations

• Making Your Healthcare Facility Literacy Friendly
  This comprehensive guide provides tools for assessing the literacy-friendliness of health care facilities, and suggests action steps for reducing literacy-related barriers. Developed by Rima Rudd and Jennie Anderson of the Harvard School of Public Health and the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy.
• National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL)
  A 2003 national representative assessment of English literacy among American adults (age 16+). More than 19,000 adults from 38 states and the District of Columbia participated in the national and state-level assessments, creating this premier source for statistics on adult literacy. Provides state and county-level literacy estimates.
• Literacy Estimates in Your Community
  Calculates adult literacy rates in your state, county, city or town.
• Pfizer Clear Health Communication Initiative
  Provides numerous resources for providers and public health professionals, including risk assessment and screening tools, calculator to estimate the portion of your patients facing health literacy challenges, tips for practice, research and materials.
• HIPAA Consent Forms
  Provides resources for making HIPAA privacy notices more readable. Uses plain language principles and a thesaurus of plain language substitutes for privacy notice language.
• Group Health Center for Health Studies, PRISM Readability Toolkit
  This comprehensive toolkit by the Project to Review Improve Study Materials (PRISM) shows how to create consent forms and other patient materials in plain language.
• Joint Commission Report
  This report, “What Did the Doctor Say? Improving Health Literacy to Protect Patient Safety” frames issues related to low health literacy and its impact on patient safety. It provides recommendations for health care stakeholders to lessen risks to patients with low health literacy and/or poor English proficiency.
• Health Literacy & Public Health, New York New Jersey Public Health Training Center
  This 2.5 hour web-based training introduces health literacy, the causes and consequences of low health literacy and its effect on public health. Includes practical techniques for improving communication with low literacy clients and is free with login.