Call for action: nurses must play a critical role to enhance health literacy

Health literacy is a precursor to health and achievement of a culture of health. 1 Patient empowerment, engagement, activation, and maximized health outcomes will not be achieved unless assurance of health literacy is applied universally for every patient, every time, in every healthcare encounter, and across all environments of care. Organizations such as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) endorse use of available resources such as the Health Literacy Universal Precaution Toolkit. 2 Health literacy universal precautions are suggested steps that can be implemented by health care systems and practices when they assume that everyone may have difficulty understanding health information and accessing health services. The toolkit is a resource that provides evidence-based guidance to primary care practices with the overarching goals of reducing the complexity of health care, increasing patient understanding of health information and providing support for all patients regardless of their health literacy level. 2 Despite these endorsements, health literacy is not well understood by clinicians, rarely approached as a health care system issue, and is not universally executed across health care domains. Strategies and initiatives must be implemented to prepare nurses and other healthcare providers to embrace the importance of health literacy and use available resources to enhance health literacy skills. In healthcare systems and community healthcare settings, leaders must provide resources that enable all healthcare providers to minimize the gap between patient skills and abilities and the demands and complexities of health care systems.