Health Literacy
Health literacy occurs when health information and services created for patients match with their capacity to find, understand, and use them. AHRQ provides the research, tools, and training to help healthcare organizations, leaders, and professionals improve health literacy and more effectively engage their patients in shared decision making, a key aspect of providing quality primary care.
Initiatives
- Health Literacy: A resource for health literacy tools, training, and research.
Highlighted Resources
- AHRQ Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit: This health literacy toolkit describes steps practices can take to make health information more understandable for all patients.
- The SHARE Approach: A 5-step process for shared decision making that includes exploring and comparing the benefits, harms, and risks of each option with patients to encourage them to share in decisions about their health.
- Advancing Pharmacy Health Literacy Practices Through Quality Improvement: Training modules to help pharmacist faculty include health literacy in their curriculum for medical students and residents.
