Academy for Educational Development

More than half of all adults in the United States have a hard time understanding health information and following medical instructions—whether it’s being able to correctly fill out a form, or properly use medication.

Health literacy, which is generally defined as the ability to read, understand, and act on health information, plays an important role in society and in business. Low levels of health literacy can often have great personal cost to patients and consumers.

To help address this problem, AED tapped its extensive experience in this area to launch a Health Literacy Practice, which aims to help groups and organizations more effectively communicate health information to underserved populations.

Led by staff from the AED Center for Social Marketing and Behavior Change, AED develops and reviews written materials, and provides training, research, and technical assistance, focused on health literacy.

“It was time to formally reach out to providers of health information to make even greater strides in increasing pubic understanding of health information,” said Todd Phillips, Co-Director of AED’s Health Literacy Practice. “This knowledge will ultimately lead to people living healthier, productive lives.”

AED has already trained more than 1,000 people in public health and the pharmaceutical industry on health literacy principles.

For the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, AED helped improve Medicare’s communication to older Americans and developed low-literacy materials to assist Medicaid in transferring 85,000 Washington, D.C., beneficiaries into managed care.

In addition, AED served on the Institute of Medicine’s health literacy expert panel, which produced the report Health Literacy: A Prescription to End Confusion. AED continues to meet with health literacy experts as part of the Institute of Medicine’s ongoing Health Literacy Roundtable.

“Research shows that we’ve got a long way to go,” said Phillips. “But the more health literacy is talked about, the greater the likelihood it will be addressed by the organizations and agencies—such as hospitals and health insurance companies—that develop health-related materials and information.”

For more information on AED’s Health Literacy Practice contact co-directors Todd Phillips or Eileen Hanlon.