Communication

PEMAT, developed by AHRQ, is a systematic method to evaluate and compare the understandability and actionability of patient education materials. It is designed as a guide to help determine whether patients will be able to understand and act on information. Separate tools are available for use with print and audiovisual materials.

This toolkit 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 understand and use.

Download the PDF at http://bit.ly/writtenmaterialstoolkit.

A guide for creating easy-to-understand materials from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Topics include:
Before You Start Writing
Connecting with Your Readers
Presenting Your Information
Formatting and Visual Clarity
Testing and Revising

The CDC Clear Communication Index (Index) is a new research-based tool to plan and assess public communication materials. The 4 questions and 20 items in the Index are drawn from the scientific literature in communication and related disciplines. The items represent the most important characteristics to enhance clarity and aid people's understanding of information.

This comprehensive source provides information on how to write easy-to-read health materials with step-by-step instructions.

Today's word-processing programs have made it almost as easy to assess the readability of a document as it is to check its spelling. Microsoft Word's word-processing software, for instance, can perform several readability calculations in the blink of an eye...Be aware that, although helpful, some of Word's readability scores are not completely trustworthy. This article explains what the scores mean and how to work around the flaws.

This pharmacy health literacy tool was released by AHRQ 10/07. It is a step-by-step guide for how to capture perspectives of objective auditors, pharmacy staff, and patients. It is designed to form a complete assessment with recommendations for evaluating the results and developing an action plan.

A training program released by AHRQ 10/07 for pharmacists about low health literacy and implications of this problem for the delivery of health care services. The program also explains techniques that pharmacy staff members can use to improve communication with patients who may have limited health literacy skills.

The Implementation Guide is a great start, as it provides step-by-step directions for redesigning labels.