Advancing Organizational Health Literacy in Health Care Organizations Serving High-Needs Populations: A Case Study

Health care organizations, well positioned to address health literacy, are beginning to shift their systems and policies to support health literacy efforts. Organizations can identify barriers, emphasize and leverage their strengths, and initiate activities that promote health literacy–related practices. The current project employed an open-ended approach to conduct a needs assessment of rural federally qualified health center clinics. Using customized assessment tools, the collaborators were then able to determine priorities for changing organizational structures and policies in order to support continued health literacy efforts. Six domains of organizational health literacy were measured with three methods: environmental assessments, patient interviews, and key informant interviews with staff and providers. Subsequent strategic planning was conducted by collaborators from the academic and clinic teams and resulted in a focused, context-appropriate action plan. The needs assessment revealed several gaps ...