Health Literacy and Plain Language

Alyssa McClean, MPHAcute and Communicable Disease Prevention

The degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.

Health Literacy:

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. (2010). National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy. Washington, DC: Author.

Health literacy levels

Below Basic• Simple and

concrete

Basic• Simple

Intermediate• Moderately

challenging

Proficient• Complex &

challenging

Kutner, M., Greenberg, E., Jin, Y., and Paulsen, C. (2006). The Health Literacy of America’s Adults: Results From the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NCES 2006–483). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.

Kutner et al. 2006

Kutner et al. 2006

5 steps preparing written materials

1. Identify purpose, audience and messages2. Arrange messages in order of importance3. Write in plain language4. Add organizational aids5. Design the format

OHA Audience Guidelines

*OHA and DHS use the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test to measure grade level.

Grade level* Audience6th grade Health literacy

8th grade General (including legislators)

10th grade DHS or OHA

12th grade Experts

OHA|DHS Style Manual, March 2016. Pg 3 https://aix-xweb1p.state.or.us/es_xweb/DHSforms/Served/me9412.pdf

www.webpagefx.com

Word choice

Common words

Personal pronouns

Active voice

Translations/culture

Format

Order Headings Chunking

Bullets White space Visuals

Experts have a lot in common with normal people

Busy

Scan

Appreciate shortcutsLoranger H., Meyer K. (2017, April 23) Writing Digital Copy for Domain Experts. Retrieved from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/writing-domain-experts/

HAI Home Page

Oregon has a number of national and state-level activities focused on understanding and reducing the occurrence of healthcare-associated infections (HAI). These include mandated reporting of high risk HAIs, validation of reported data, and a patient safety commission adapting evidence-based HAI prevention strategies aimed at reducing HAIs. Oregon also has multiple research projects to determine overall HAI prevalence, to make HAI surveillance easier for hospitals, and to monitor specific HAI pathogens.

HAI Home Page

We work to understand and reduce healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) in Oregon. Here are some of the ways we do that:• Collect statewide data on reportable HAIs.• Validate reported data.• Consult on outbreaks of transmissible pathogens in healthcare

settings.• Conduct research projects that help us:

– Learn how many and what type of HAIs happen in Oregon.– Make HAI tracking easier for hospitals.

Plain language basicsW

ord

choi

ce Common wordsPersonal pronounsActive voiceConsider translations and culture

Form

at OrganizedHeadingsBulletsChunkingWhite spaceVisuals