Members of our team had the opportunity to present a new poster abstract, "Health Literacy Universal Precautions: An Evaluation of the Methods and Resources Utilized by Pharmacy Staff to Aid in Bridging the Health Literacy Gap", at the ASHP 2024 Midyear Meeting held December 8 - 12, 2024.

Authors:

Shelby Edwards, PharmD | Andrew Wash, PharmD, PhD | Rabiah Dys, PharmD, RPh | Karen Lee, PharmD, RPh, BCPS

Background:

• Health literacy encompasses (1) personal health literacy, which is the degree to which individuals can find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others and (2) organizational health literacy, which is the degree to which organizations equitably enable individuals to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others.¹
• Low health literacy limits patients' understanding and ability to fully engage in their healthcare encounters, leading to poor health outcomes and higher healthcare costs.²
• Health literacy universal precautions assume every patient may have difficulty understanding and/or accessing health information, regardless of their background or perceived literacy.³ These universal precautions are recommended to optimize care communication and navigation.
• There is limited evidence of health literacy universal precautions that has focused on adoption among pharmacy staff across practice settings. By evaluating pharmacy staff's strategies to address health literacy, we can gain insight into what is currently implemented in practice, assess the structural gaps, and make recommendations to our organization in improving our organizational health literacy.

Objectives:

• To evaluate the strategies utilized by pharmacy staff practicing in outpatient, inpatient, and other specialized settings to support patients' health literacy.

Read about the team's findings by downloading the outcomes study below.