Organizational Health Literacy (OHL)
The WHO Action Network M-POHL is based on an advanced understanding of health literacy as a comprehensive and relational concept. Therefore, M-POHL aims not only at measuring population health literacy, but also at assessing organizational health literacy, respectively the health literacy responsiveness or friendliness of healthcare organizations.
By focusing on healthcare organizations, health policy can choose from or combine two different strategies to improve health literacy: providing learning opportunities for people to improve their personal health literacy and investing in the developing of healthcare organizations to become more transparent and user-friendly, even for people with limited personal health literacy. A health literate healthcare organization should make it easier for all its stakeholders (patients, staff, the community it serves) to access, to understand, to appraise and to apply health-related information for maintaining and improving their health.
Overview:
Why does M-POHL focus on organizational health literacy in healthcare organizations, aims, participants and coordination?
How the OHL tools are developed and tested: hospital and primary care assessment tools, translation/cultural adaptation, piloting phases, and international exchange.
Downloads and factsheets for OHL-Hos-SF and OHL-PHC, plus supporting files to summarize scores and generate graphs.
- Brach, C., Keller, D., Hernandez, L. M., Baur, C., Parker, R., Dreyer, B., Schyve, P., Lemerise, A.J. and Schillinger, D. (2012) 'Ten Attributes of Health Literate Health Care Organizations' Washington DC: Institute of Medicine of the National Académies.
- Brach, C. (2017) 'The Journey to Become a Health Literate Organization: A Snapshot of Health System Improvement' Stud Health Technol Inform, 240, pp. 203–237.
- DeGani, S., Nowak-Flück, D., Nicca, D. and Vogt D. (2020) 'Self-Assessment Tool to Promote Organizational Health Literacy in Primary Care Settings in Switzerland' International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17249497.
- Dietscher, C. and Pelikan, J.M. (2017) ‘Health-literate hospitals and healthcare organizations. Results from an Austrian feasibility study on the self-assessment of organizational health literacy in hospitals’ in Schaeffer, D. and Pelikan J.M. (eds.) Health Literacy, Forschungsstand und Perspektiven, Bern: Hogrefe, pp. 303-313.
- Farmanova, E., Bonneville, L. and Bouchard, L. (2018) 'Organizational Health Literacy: Review of Theories, Frameworks, Guides, and Implementation Issues' Inquiry, 55. doi:10.1177/0046958018757848.
- Henrard, G., Vanmeerbeek, M., Buret, L. and Rademakers, J (2019): Dealing with health literacy at the organisational level, French translation and adaptation of the Vienna health literate organisation self-assessment tool. BMC Health Services Research, 19 (146). doi:10.1186/s12913-019-3955-y.
- International Working Group Health Promoting Hospitals and Health Literate Healthcare Organizations (Working Group HPH & HLO) (2019) 'International Self-Assessment Tool Organizational Health Literacy (Responsiveness) for Hospitals - SAT-OHL-Hos-v1.3-EN-international (updated 2023). Vienna: WHO Collaborating Centre for Health Promotion in Hospitals and Healthcare (CC-HPH).
- Kickbusch I., Pelikan, J. M., Apfel, F., and Tsouros, A. D. (2013) Health literacy. The solid facts. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe.
- Pelikan, J.M. (2019) ‘Health-literate healthcare organizations’ in Okan, O., Bauer, U., Levin-Zamir, D. and Sorensen, K. (eds.) International Handbook of Health Literacy – Research, Practice and Policy across the Life-Span. Policy Press, pp. 539-554.
- Trezona, A., Dodson, S. and Osborne, R.H. (2017) 'Development of the organisational health literacy responsiveness (Org-HLR) framework in collaboration with health and social services professionals' BMC Health Services Research,18 (694).
- Trezona, A., Dodson, S., Fitzsimon, E., LaMontagne, A. D. and Osborne R. H. (2020) 'Field-Testing and Refinement of the Organisational Health Literacy Responsiveness Self-Assessment (Org-HLR) Tool and Process. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17 (1000). doi:10.3390/ijerph17031000.
- Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit
- Implementing the AHRQ Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit: Practical ideas for Primary Care Practices
- Organizational Health Literacy Toolkit
- HeLLO TAS! Toolkit - Toolkit for Health Literacy Learning Organizations
- Patient and family engagement module of the CUSP Toolkit
- Building Health Literate Organizations: A guidebook to achieving organizational change
- The Gippsland Guide to becoming a Health Literate Organization
- Make it easy: a handbook for becoming a Health Literate Organization
- NALA Guide on becoming Literacy Friendly Organization
- A Checklist for Health Literate Organizations
- Health Literacy Online: A guide for simplifying the user experience
- Health IT Literacy Guide
- The health literacy environment of hospitals and health centers: Making your healthcare facility literacy‐friendly
- Making Health Literacy real: The beginnings of my organization’s plan for action
- Health Literacy Framework: A guide to action
- Health Literacy Review: A guide
- “What did the doctor say?:” Improving Health Literacy to protect patient safety
- Always Use Teach-back! Toolkit