Research Guides: Health Literacy: Clear Communication

Communication

AHRQ: Questions are the Answer
Tips and tools patients can use to communicate with their health care providers.
American Medical Association: Medspeak Can Shut Down Effective Health Communication with Patients
Learn more about how you can communicate clearly with your patients.
Centers for Disease Control: Simply Put A Guide for Creating Easy-to Understand Materials
The guidance in Simply Put helps you transform complicated scientific and technical information into communication materials your audiences can relate to and understand.
Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services: Toolkit for Making Written Material Clear and Effective
The Toolkit for Making Written Material Clear and Effective is a health literacy resource from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). This 11-part Toolkit provides a detailed and comprehensive set of tools to help you make written material in printed formats easier for people to read, understand, and use.
Health Literacy Online: A Guide for Simplifying the User Experience
This research-based guide will help you develop intuitive health websites and digital tools that can be easily accessed and understood by all users — including the millions of Americans who struggle to find, process, and use online health information.
Health Literacy Style Manual
Provides advice on improving print material for readability.
National Institutes of Health: Clear and Simple
Learn more about communicating clearly with patients.

Communication/Teach Back

Teach-back is a technique for health care providers to ensure that they have explained medical information clearly so that patients and their families understand what is communicated to them.

(Toolkit) AHRQ: Teach-Back: Intervention
Provides a toolkit of resources to support implementation of using teach-back.
Institute for Healthcare Advancement: Who Can Use Teach-Back?
Provides examples of the use of teach-back in different medical settings.
(Tutorial) Institute for Healthcare Advancement: Always Use Teach Back Interactive Learning Module
The Interactive Teach-back Learning Module has two parts: It describes teach-back and demonstrates its effectiveness as a health literacy intervention to improve patient-provider communication. Video and interactive self-assessment questions enhance, confirm, and reinforce your ability to use teach-back and integrate it into your clinical practice.
(Toolkit): AHRQ The SHARE Approach Using the Teach-Back Technique: A Reference Guide for Health Care Providers
The SHARE Approach is a 1-day training program developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to help health care professionals work with patients to make the best possible health care decisions. It supports shared decision making through the use of patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR).

Communication/Plain Language

Communication is in plain language if the intended audience can easily find what they need, understand what they find (after reading it just once), and use that information.

Assessing and Developing Health Materials
A succinct guide from the Harvard School of Public Health outling the steps to assessing and developing health materials for patients.
Centers for Disease Control: Older Adults/Health Literacy
Resources about health literacy and older adults and how to communicate more effectively with older adults.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Plain Language Materials
Explains plain language.
Clear Communication: An NIH Health Literacy Initiative
The site provides information on topics such as: clear communication, health literacy, plain langauage, and cultural competency.
Health Literacy Online: A Guide to Writing and Designing Easy-to-Use Web Sites
Contains a step-by-step guide to writing easy-to-read health web sites.
National Institutes of Health: A Plain Language Checklist for Reviewing Your Document
Use this checklist to assess documents for plain language.
National Institutes of Health: Clear Communication/Health Literacy
Links to a variety of information about clear communication and health literacy.
National Institutes of Health: Plain Language
Find out more about plain language. Also provides links to additional training resources.
Plain Language.gov
Contains guidelines for writing in plain langauage and contains a section about health literacy.
Plain Language Association International
Plain Language Association International is the international association for plain language supporters and practitioners around the world. Their network includes members from over 30 countries working in clear communication in at least 15 languages.

Shared Decision Making

Shared decision making is a model of patient-centered care that enables and encourages people to play a role in the medical decisions that affect their health. It operates under two premises:

First, consumers armed with good information can and will participate in the medical decision making process by asking informed questions and expressing personal values and opinions about their conditions and treatment options.
Second, clinicians will respect patients' goals and preferences and use them to guide recommendations and treatments.
- https://www.ahrq.gov/cahps/quality-improvement/improvement-guide/6-strategies-for-improving/communication/strategy6i-shared-decisionmaking.html

AHRQ: SHARE Approach Webinars
AHRQ offers accredited Webinars on topics related to the implementation of patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) and shared decision making.

AHRQ: Shared Decision Making
Provides information about what shared decision making is, why it is important, and how to implement it.