Talking Points About Health Literacy
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Advocate for building a health literate organization

As a health literacy ambassador, it’s up to you to make sure your colleagues, staff, senior leadership, and community leaders understand the importance of using health literacy concepts. Use these talking points when making the case for building a health literate organization. Add talking points relevant to your organization.
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  1. Nearly nine out of 10 adults struggle to understand and use personal and public health information when it’s filled with unfamiliar or complex terms.
  2. Limited health literacy costs the healthcare system money and results in higher than necessary morbidity and mortality. Improving health literacy could prevent nearly 1 million hospital visits and save over $25 billion a year.
  3. We can improve health literacy if we practice clear communication strategies and techniques. Clear communication means presenting familiar concepts, words, numbers, and images in ways that make sense to the people who need the information.
  4. Testing information products with your intended audience and asking for feedback are the best ways to know if you’re communicating clearly. Test and ask for feedback before releasing information to the public.
  5. Clear communication builds trust with your audience. When your audience trusts you, they’re more likely to follow your recommendations.
  6. Choosing to use jargon is an act of exclusion. Using clear communication advances health equity.
  7. Clear communication streamlines the translation process. That means you can more quickly share your information with people who are non-native English speakers and readers.

Understanding Health Literacy
​Health Literacy Affects Everyone

Health literacy is important for everyone because, at some point in our lives, we all need to be able to find, understand, and use health information and services.

Taking care of our health is part of everyday life, not just when we visit a doctor, clinic, or hospital. Health literacy can help us prevent health problems and protect our health, as well as better manage those problems and unexpected situations that happen.

Even people who read well and are comfortable using numbers can face health literacy issues when

  • They aren’t familiar with medical terms or how their bodies work.
  • They have to interpret statistics and evaluate risks and benefits that affect their health and safety.
  • They are diagnosed with a serious illness and are scared and confused.
  • They have health conditions that require complicated self-care.
  • They are voting on an issue affecting the community’s health and relying on unfamiliar technical information.


Why Do We Have a Health Literacy Problem?

People need information they can understand and use to make the best decisions for their health.
When organizations or people create and give others health information that is too difficult for them to understand, we create a health literacy problem. When we expect them to figure out health services with many unfamiliar, confusing or even conflicting steps, we also create a health literacy problem.

How Can We Help People Now?

We can help people use the health literacy skills they have. How? We can

  • create and provide information and services people can understand and use most effectively with the skills they have. See Develop and Test Materials.
  • work with educators and others to help people become more familiar with health information and services and build their health literacy skills over time. See Collaborate.
  • build our own skills as communicators of health information. See Find Training for free, online options.


Reports and Evidence on Limited Health Literacy

Several reports document that limited health literacy affects many types of health conditions, diseases, situations, and outcomes, including health status and costs.
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In 2006, the U.S. Department of Education published the only national data on health literacy skills. The study found that adults who self-report the worst health also have the most limited literacy, numeracy, and health literacy skills. See The Health Literacy Of America’s Adults: Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacyexternal icon.

The U.S. Department of Education subsequently published 2012/14 and 2017 results on self-reported health status of U.S. adults using data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC)external icon. These results reinforce the findings of their 2006 report.

European Union countries have found similar health literacy skill issues in the European Health Literacy Surveyexternal icon (Source: Maastricht University 2012).

The following two resources are regularly updated with health literacy research:


Are Limited Health Literacy and Limited Literacy the Same Problem?

No, but they are related. People’s reading, writing and numbers skills are only a part of health literacy. People do need strong literacy and numeracy skills to make it easier to understand and use health information and services. But, research shows that many health and healthcare activities are unfamiliar, complicated, and technical to most people.

Learn More from Health Literacy Leaders
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Listen to health literacy leaders describe their research and practice in podcastsexternal icon (Source: Health Literacy Out Loud).

What Is Health Literacy?

The definition of health literacy was updated in August 2020 with the release of the U.S. government’s Healthy People 2030external icon initiative. The update addresses personal health literacy and organizational health literacy and provides the following definitions:

  • 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.


These definitions are a change from the health literacy definition used in Healthy People 2010 and Healthy People 2020: “the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.”

The new definitions:

  • Emphasize people’s ability to use health information rather than just understand it
  • Focus on the ability to make “well-informed” decisions rather than “appropriate” ones
  • Acknowledge that organizations have a responsibility to address health literacy
  • Incorporate a public health perspective


From a public health perspective, the organizational definition acknowledges that health literacy is connected to health equity. Health equity is the attainment of the highest level of health for all people. We will achieve health equity when everyone has the opportunity to be as healthy as possible.

Listen to the podcastexternal icon on the definition of health literacy.

Rationale and Process for New Health Literacy DefinitionsIn the March 2021 article, “Updating Health Literacy for Healthy People 2030: Defining Its Importance for a New Decade in Public Health,” Santana and colleagues provide the rationale and process for updating the definition of health literacy. You can download the article for freeexternal icon from the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice (JPHMP).
Two of Santana’s co-authors, Cindy Brach and Dushanka Kleinman, discuss the article in this JPHMP podcastexternal icon.

Why Is Health Literacy Important?

media iconLow Resolution VideoListen to Dr. Rima Rudd, health literacy expert at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, address staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In her presentation, “Health Literacy Research Findings and Insights: Increasing Organizational Capacity for Shaping Public Health Messages,” she discusses the following:

  • ​The history of health literacy as a field of study
  • The impact of health literacy on health disparities
  • Barriers to and facilitators of personal and organizational change
  • Health literacy research evaluation


Take action to improve health literacy

How Can Organizations, Communities, and Individuals Improve Health Literacy?The resources on this site will help you learn about health literacy and what you, your organization, or community can do to improve it. The goals and strategies in the National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacypdf iconexternal icon are a good place to begin.
You can sign up for the Institute of Healthcare Advancement’s health literacy listservexternal icon and keep track of new developments in the field. You can also subscribe to CDC’s weekly health literacy updates.
Businesses, educators, community leaders, government agencies, health insurers, healthcare providers, the media, and many other organizations and individuals all have a part to play in improving health literacy in our society.