Building Health Literate Organizations: A Guidebook to Achieving Organizational Change

Presenter: Mary Ann Abrams

Dr. Mary Ann Abrams hosted an informational and engaging session that encouraged organizational change.  She began her discussion with a brief overview of the health literacy field and the immediate need of implementing health literacy principles into organizational structure.  She then moved into describing the 10 Attributes of Health Literate Health Care Organizations; a guide with 9 chapters dedicated to help organizations implement and spread health literacy related improvements.  Dr. Abrams began the discussion of this guide by providing the 3 questions that are asked in every chapter:  1) Why do you need to address health literacy issues in this area? 2) What would success in this area look like? 3) How could one accomplish these successes?

When using the guide, Mary Ann encourages individuals to start with the chapter that would achieve the most organizational support.  She suggests that the guide does not need to be used in chronological order and each chapter can be used as a standalone.  After this description, Mary Ann moved into group activities.  She divided the room into groups to discuss chapters 3-7 and gave specific questions to each group to report on.  Once the groups reconvened, each group reported their responses to their assigned questions.  This interactive discussion led participants to collaborate on shared experiences and resources.