The National Academies Press published a new workshop summary from the Institute of Medicine Roundtable on Health Literacy entitled How Can Health Care Organizations Become More Health Literate? – Workshop Summary on Wednesday. The summary outlines the problem of health literacy in the United States and the need “to develop strategies that health care organization can use to improve their health-literacy-promoting attributes” based on the literature and examples from a number of health care facilities. Attributes of health literate organizations, panel reactions to four different real-life health literacy situations and roundtable reflections are featured in this summary.
The Institute of Medicine has published a number of additional health literacy publications, including Health Literacy: A Prescription to End Confusion (2004), Health Literacy, eHealth, and Communication: Putting the Consumer First: Workshop Summary(2009), and Measures of Health Literacy: Workshop Summary (2009).
The Boston Children’s Library also has books about this topic available for checkout including: Plain Language Pediatrics: Health Literacy Strategies and Communication Resources for Common Pediatric Topics, by Benard P. Dryer & Mary Ann Abrams, WS 100 P698 2009 and Health Literacy: Help Your Patients Understand, by Barry D. Weiss, Career Center WA 590 H436 2003.