Health Literacy

Healthy People 2030 recognizes two components of health literacy, personal health literacy and organizational health literacy.

  • 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 acknowledge that organizations have a responsibility to improve health literacy equitably and that health literacy depends on the context in which people operate.

And, they emphasize that the ultimate goal is for people to:

  • Use health information rather than just understand it
  • Make “well-informed” decisions rather than “appropriate” ones

What is our role in promoting health literacy?

Health literacy is a common thread through all of our programs.

To support staff and providers, HRSA’s Office of Health Equity, in coordination with other Bureaus and Offices, provides tailored training to health care professionals so that they can identify the specific health literacy levels of their patients and make simple communication changes.

Additional Tools

Reports and Publications

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