October is Health Literacy Month

Posted by Nora Barnett on October 14th, 2026 Posted in: Blog

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October is Health Literacy Month! We’ve compiled some resources to help you and your organization improve health literacy. Health literacy has two parts:  

• Personal health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the ability to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others. 

• Organizational health literacy is the degree to which organizations equitably enable individuals to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others. (Healthy People, 2030) 

Health literacy intersects with digital literacy and numerical literacy, as well as with a range of individual, socioeconomic, and cultural factors. These factors can influence how easily people find, understand, and use health information and services.  

Health literacy affects health decision making and utilization of services. Limited health literacy is associated with poorer health outcomes. 

It can be easy to focus on health literacy as an individual’s set of abilities, but there is a real need to improve health literacy at the organizational level. Improving organizational health literacy requires health organizations and providers to think about who faces barriers to finding, understanding, and using health information, and how the organization can design health communication materials and services for them.  

Tools for improving organizational health literacy 

Health Education Materials Assessment Tool is a tool from the National Library of Medicine to help you figure out if a material can be designated as “easy-to-read.” 

PEMAT, the Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool, is a systematic method to evaluate and compare the understandability and actionability of patient education materials. Produced by the AHRQ, it is designed as a guide to help determine whether patients will be able to understand and act on information. There is a version of PEMAT for printable materials and a version of PEMAT for audiovisual materials.  

Suitability Assessment of Materials (SAM) is a systematic tool used to evaluate health education materials. It assesses factors such as content, literacy demand, graphics, layout, and cultural relevance to determine whether materials are understandable and accessible to the target population. 

Health Literacy Online, from the Department of Health and Human Services, offers instructions on how to write and create user-friendly digital health information and services. This research-based guide discusses why and how to design health websites and other digital health information products for a range of audiences, including those with low health literacy.   

Ten Attributes of Health Literate Health Care Organizations. The AHRQ outlines ten attributes of health literacy organizations, along with links to AHRQ resources that can assist in each attribute. Based on the paper Ten Attributes of Health Literate Healthcare Organizations.  

Health literacy webinar recordings from NNLM  

Health Communication and Health Literacy: Understanding the Connection addresses how you can improve communication materials and spoken communication to improve health literacy.  

Measurements of Health Literacy explores the dual nature of health literacy measurement: assessing the understandability of written materials and evaluating an individual’s ability to comprehend and apply health information.  

Health Literacy of People Living with Mental Health or Substance Use Disorders sheds light on the health literacy of individuals living with mental health and substance use disorders, offering practical tools and next steps to address the health literacy of this population. 

Providing Multilingual Health Information covers how to locate and provide health information in languages other than English. 

Designing for Health Literacy: Exploring Technologies to Support Health Information Access explores emerging technologies to support older adults’ health information access and management.

Health Literacy! It Just Got Graphic looks at how to use graphic medicine to improve health literacy for all ages.