In its landmark report, Health Literacy: A Prescription to End Confusion, the Institute of Medicine noted that there are 90 million adults in the United States with limited health literacy who cannot fully benefit from what the health and health care systems have to offer. Since the release of that report, health literacy has become a vibrant research field that has developed and disseminated a wide range of tools and practices that have helped organizations, ranging in size from large health care systems to individual health care providers and pharmacists, to engage in health literate discussions with and provide health literate materials for patients and family members. Improving the health literacy of organizations can be an important component of addressing the social determinants of health and achieving the triple aim of improving the patient experience, improving the health of populations, and reducing the cost of care. However, the focus on organizations does not address the larger issue of how to improve health literacy across the U.S. population.

To get a better understanding of the state of community-based health literacy interventions, the Roundtable on Health Literacy hosted a workshop on July 19, 2017 on community-based health literacy interventions. It featured examples of community-based health literacy programs, discussions on how to evaluate such programs, and the actions the field can take to embrace this larger view of health literacy. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

Contents

• The National Academies of SCIENCES • ENGINEERING • MEDICINE
• PLANNING COMMITTEE ON COMMUNITY-BASED HEALTH LITERACY INTERVENTIONS
• ROUNDTABLE ON HEALTH LITERACY
• Reviewers
• Acknowledgments
• Acronyms and Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction
  • ORGANIZATION OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF A WORKSHOP
• 2. Presentation and Discussion on the Commissioned Paper
  • DISCUSSION
• 3. Examples of Community-Based Health Literacy Programs
  • HEALTH LITERACY IN PUBLIC LIBRARIES
  • COVER MISSOURI'S COMMUNITY HEALTH LITERACY PROGRAM
  • HEALTH LITERACY IN HEAD START PROGRAMS
  • MODERATED PANEL DISCUSSION
  • DISCUSSION
• 4. Evaluating Community-Based Health Literacy Interventions
  • POTENTIAL ISSUES AND CHALLENGES IN EVALUATING COMMUNITY-BASED HEALTH LITERACY
  • MODERATED PANEL DISCUSSION WITH EVALUATORS
  • DISCUSSION
• 5. Where Do We Go from Here?
  • MODERATED DIALOGUE
  • DISCUSSION
• 6. Reflections on the Day
• References
• APPENDIXES
  • Appendix A. Workshop Agenda
  • Appendix B. Biographical Sketches of Workshop Moderators, Speakers, and Panelists
  • Appendix C. A Review and Report of Community-Based Health Literacy Interventions
    Cynthia Baur, Lourdes M. Martinez, Nedelina Tchangalova, and Don Rubin.

Rapporteur: Joe Alper.

Suggested citation:

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. Community-based health literacy interventions: Proceedings of a workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.17226/24917.