Includes bibliographical references and index.

About health literacy -- Assessing health literacy -- Assessing readability with grade level formulas -- Business side of health literacy -- Communicating when patients feel scared, sick, and overwhelmed -- Confirming understanding : Feedback from interviews, focus groups, and usability testing -- Confirming understanding : Teach-back technique -- Decision aids and shared decision-making -- Document design -- Environment of care : Entrances, questions, signs, and Feng Shui -- Ethics of simplicity -- Forms and other "reading-to-do" documents -- General public : Talking with patients about what they learn from the media -- Humor and healing -- Interpreters and translations -- Jargon, acronyms, and other troublesome words -- Know your audience : Children and youth -- Know your audience : Culture and language -- Know your audience: Emotions and cognition -- Know your audience : Hearing loss -- Know your audience : Literacy -- Know your audience : Older adults -- Know your audience : Vision problems -- Listening and speaking -- Metaphors, similes, and analogies -- Numeracy -- Organizational efforts : Health literacy at the community, state, and national levels -- Plain language -- Question-asking -- Regulatory and legal language -- Stories -- Teaching and learning -- Technology : Audio podcasts -- Technology: Blogs and other social media -- Technology : Email and text messaging -- Technology : Interactive multimedia -- Universal design in communication -- Visuals -- Writing for the web -- X-tras -- You : Empathy and humanity -- Zest and pizzazz.

With patient experience at the forefront of health care, effective communication of health messages is critical to quality care. This book offers proven strategies to help providers clearly explain health information to a variety of audiences, from patients and caregivers, to students and the public.