This NIH guide is designed to assist health communicators in developing audience-appropriate information and communicating effectively with people with limited health literacy skills.

These are the official guidelines for the Plain Writing Act of 2010 developed to help you and your agency write clearly and make your information understandable & actionable..

The exercises in this packet are designed to help hospitals and health center staff members begin to consider some of the characteristics of their workplace that help or hinder a visitor’s ability to make his or her way about.

The AHRQ Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit, 3rd edition, can help primary care practices reduce the complexity of health care, increase patient understanding of health information, and enhance support for patients of all health literacy levels.

This plain language checklist is designed to help agencies apply plain language to public communications about health, safety, health insurance and social benefits information. The checklist was created in 2023 by a workgroup of state and local public agencies under the Maryland Consumer Health Information Hub.

The PRISM Readability Toolkit is a compendium of strategies, real-world examples, and related resources to aid researchers and others in the health care setting create print materials that a potential study participant or patient can easily understand.

This guide will help you transform complicated scientific and technical information into communication materials your audiences can relate to and understand. It also provides practical ways to organize information and use language and visuals. This guide will be useful for creating fact sheets, FAQ’s, brochures, booklets, pamphlets, and other materials, including web content.

This handout offers tips to help patients make sense of numbers so they can be as informed
as possible.

Among other assistance provides descriptions of different audience characteristics and provides tips on how to communicate to them.

Making your healthcare facility literacy-friendly

Strategies for developing, writing and formatting easy-to-read materials for skilled readers as well as for those who struggle to read.

This guide was designed to help users create an easy-to-use "pill card" for patients, parents, or anyone who has a hard time keeping track of their medicines. Step-by-step instructions, sample clip art, and suggestions for design and use will help to customize a reminder card.

Symptoms, inhaler, tonsillectomy - what do all those medical words mean? Check out our virtual glossary for lots of easy-to-read definitions.

Language, hearing, and visual barriers are
common in the United States. This guide offers tips for overcoming communication challenges so you and your patients can engage in effective shared decision making.
This guide also focuses on ways to efficiently work with qualified medical interpreters.

This site provides pharmacists with recently released health literacy tools and other resources from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

Contains best practices & tools for plain language public health communications and and provides additional resources.

Get tips and learn about resources for communicating with older patients. This resource is from the National Institute on Aging.

The purpose of this toolkit is to help all health care providers learn to use teach-back to support patients and families throughout the care continuum.
The toolkit combines health literacy principles of plain language and using teach-back to confirm understanding, with behavior change principles of coaching to new habits and adapting systems to promote consistent use of key practices.

Teaching Patients with Low Literacy Skills, now considered a classic text in health literacy. can be read and downloaded here.

Do you want to create actionable, usable health websites and digital tools? Use the research-based guidelines in Health Literacy Online to develop effective products for all users, including those with limited literacy or health literacy skills.

Created by the Horowitz Health Literacy Center, this tool addresses three categories of health literacy principles: actionable items, plain language, and content organization. Examples from a website are included to illustrate best practices.