Health literacy is about people being able to understand health information. It’s about us making it easier for them to do this. It’s talking to patients using everyday words. It’s writing to them in a way that’s clear. This helps our patients and service users make informed choices about their health.
We can all share clearer health information. We can all speak and write in ways that make it easier for our patients and service users to understand.
We can write in a clear way, at the average UK reading age. We can use as little medical jargon as possible. We can talk about health using everyday words.
We can check with patients and service users if we’ve explained clearly before they go home. The regional health literacy team is here to help with this.
Health literacy is about people being able to access, understand, use and check information to make choices about their health. A health literate organisation makes is easy for people to do this.
Our organisational health literacy standards give you a framework to work towards. This will help you to become a health literate organisation. The supporting toolkit will give you the tools and resources to help you to meet the standards. They will help you put things in place to improve health literacy and meet the needs of the communities we serve.
