Health Literacy Innovations & the AmeriHealth Mercy Family of Companies Release the Nation's First Comprehensive "Health Literacy & Plain Language Resource Guide"
Guide Aims to Help Improve Outcomes and Lower Costs
Bethesda, Md., and Philadelphia, PA - Low health literacy is a problem that leads to poor medical outcomes for millions of Americans and costs the health care industry an estimated $60 billion a year. Consumers with low health literacy – those who cannot read, understand, or act on health information and instructions – face multiple health risks. Confusion about or lack of health care information may result in poor control of chronic illnesses such as diabetes, more hospitalizations and longer lengths of stay, and improperly taken medications.
Many health care providers are becoming increasingly aware of the issue and challenge of health literacy, but do not know where to find the tools and resources that will help them. That is why Health Literacy Innovations (HLI), a social entrepreneurship company that creates tools to enhance health literacy, in partnership with the AmeriHealth Mercy Family of Companies, a leader in publicly insured health care, today announced the nation’s first comprehensive guide on health literacy, the "Health Literacy & Plain Language Resource Guide." Gleaned from hundreds of national and international resources, this new free guide brings together health literacy resources that health providers and educators need.
"By creating and distributing the first national ‘Health Literacy & Plain Language Resource Guide,’ we are helping the health care industry to better understand health literacy, access world of knowledge on health literacy, and share the success and wisdom of others to help consumers better understand their health care information,"says Aracely Rosales, Chief Content Expert and Multilingual Director, Health Literacy Innovations.
Distributed for free, the "Health Literacy & Plain Language Resource Guide" will be available at health care conferences across the U.S.
"Because of the importance of this information, we are pleased to partner with Health Literacy Innovations to support the distribution of this unique guide so that as many people as possible can reap its benefits," said Jay Feldstein, DO, Corporate Chief Medical Officer, the AmeriHealth Mercy Family of Companies. "Health literacy is an important issue that must be addressed."
About Health Literacy Innovations
Health Literacy Innovations, a social entrepreneurship company, creates innovative tools to enhance health literacy. Its flagship tool, the Health Literacy Advisor (HLA), is the nation’s first interactive health literacy software tool. As an innovation in health literacy, the HLA streamlines the review process, by combining six different readability tools and a powerful search and replace function to offer users plain language alternatives for word choices that compromise clarity. The HLA also scans and highlights words by word category (health or non-health), flags sentences that are too long, and can mark documents with a readability stamp. It is the only product on the market that scrubs a document – ignores phone numbers, URLs, headings, and bullets -- before it calculates readability, giving users an accurate readability score.
Health Literacy Innovations believes if it can empower communicators to create, produce, print, display, share, and advertise clear health information, it can help improve health care outcomes one word at a time. For more information visit www.HealthLiteracyInnovations.com or call 301-230-4966.
About the AmeriHealth Mercy Family of Companies
The AmeriHealth Mercy Family of Companies is a mission-driven organization, dedicated to ensuring the delivery of quality health care to low-income populations covered by publicly funded programs throughout the United States. With 25 years of experience exclusively serving the Medicaid population, AmeriHealth Mercy and its affiliates comprise the largest family of Medicaid managed care plans in the United States, touching the lives of more than 6.5 million members nationwide. For more information about AmeriHealth Mercy and its family of companies, please visit AmeriHealth Mercy.
|
Services
& Products 
