Building a Health Literate Website

Everyone should be entitled to easy-to-understand, accessible, relatable, and actionable health information. However, about 130 million adults in the U.S. have low literacy skills. According to the CDC, nearly nine out of 10 adults struggle to understand and use personal and public health information when faced with strange and complex medical terms.?

Health literacy proceeds from a convergence of education, health services, and social and cultural factors. It goes beyond reading skills and also includes writing, numeracy, listening, speaking, and conceptual knowledge. Providing health information online that is reliable, accessible, and easy to understand can effectively increase the reach of life-saving health information.?

In a report by the Pew Research Center, one in three U.S. adults said that at one time or another, they went online specifically to try to understand a medical condition they have or someone else might have.?

In a previous article, I shared best practices for an effective healthcare website, and you can find the article?here. In this article, I want to highlight key strategies of a website tuned to address the needs of patients with limited health literacy skills and share a few examples of noteworthy healthcare websites.?

Essential elements of a health literate website:?

• Plain language:?Write your web content in clear, concise, and unambiguous language. Your goal is to help the reader to read your message once, understand it, and act on that health information. Writing in plain language will also build trust with your target audience.?
• Key information:?Put the most important information first. Numerous individuals with limited health literacy skills read only the first few words on a page or paragraph. If they feel like the information is easy to understand, they may keep reading.
• Display:?Writing your web content in plain language is just the first step. It also matters how you display your content. Web content needs to look easy to read, especially on mobile devices. Make use of white space, layout, font, images, and color to help users understand the content on your website.?
• Structure:?Organize the information on your website in a way that simplifies navigation. Label and organize content with the needs of your audience in mind. Also, provide your web visitors with different ways to browse and search for information on your website.?
• Engagement:?Develop interactive health content that engages your audience in a way that motivates them to take action. Consider creating multimedia content like video, audio, graphics, and visuals that are interactive, straightforward information, and easy to share on social media channels.?

Examples of exceptional health literate websites:?

Various websites are patient-friendly and meet the criteria of a health literate website, however, in this section, I spotlighted three healthcare websites that are doing an exceptional job.?

1. Healthline.com:?This is a great example of a patient-friendly and health literate website. Some highlights: Use of plain language, good font size, great visuals, and display of health information. They also make great use of white space. White space allows for the visual separation of design and text elements on a page and improves readability.?
2. Health.com:?Another good example of a health literate medical website. There is a good use of contrast with colors, spacing, visuals, and font size. The navigation bar is structured in a way that makes it easier for a person with limited health literacy skills to find the information they need.?
3. MyKidneysMyHealth.com:?This website is an interactive tool focused on providing guidance and supporting information to patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and their caregivers. The information is organized with the user in mind. For example, some of the labels in their navigation bar are: “my food list” and “my question list". The information is also displayed in short paragraphs since long paragraphs can be overwhelming to individuals with limited health literacy skills.?

Health consumers face numerous challenges as they seek health information, including the complexity of health systems, the growing burden of chronic conditions, and rising misinformation online. The presentation of health information is also often unnecessarily complex. Therefore, healthcare organizations play an important role in developing websites that are interactive, intuitive, and meet the needs of patients with limited literacy levels.?

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At Health Discourse, we create better health experiences through plain language content.?Learn more.?