Health Literacy Resources

Health Literacy is the ability to understand health information and to use that information to make good decisions about your health and medical care. Health information can overwhelm even people with advanced literacy skills. About one third of the adult population in the United States has limited health literacy.


Limited health literacy can affect a patient's ability to

• Fill out complex forms
• Locate providers and services
• Share personal information such as health history
• Take care of yourself
• Manage a chronic disease
• Understand how to take medicines
                                    -- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

If you would like to learn more about how to help patients be more health literate, please visit the Health Literacy Resources web page.  (Affinity Access Only)

Easy-to-Read Patient Education Materials in MedlinePlus

Are you looking for patient education materials that are easy-to-read?
Medical concepts and language are very complex. People need easily understandable health information regardless of age, background or reading level. Try the following free sources :

MedlinePlus Easy-To-Read (National Library of Medicine) includes patient education handouts, many in Spanish as well as English.

MedlinePlus Interactive Tutorials
The Patient Education Institute offers a series of interactive tutorials that can be set to run for patients. Viewers can “page” through it if they are comfortable with computers, or it can run by itself. The tutorial will READ the content to the patient, so even if they don't read (or don't like to), they can still take in the info by hearing it. This is also great for people for whom English is not their first language. Using animated graphics each tutorial explains a procedure or condition in easy-to-read language. There's also a printable 1-page text summary that can be used as a handout.

Find additional consumer health and patient education resources here.