Health Literacy in Public Health

CCDPH launched the Advancing Organizational Health Literacy toolkit on April 9, 2025 (read press release here). If you work in public health, government, social services or healthcare, this toolkit is for you. The toolkit provides an introduction to organizational health literacy (defined below) and focuses on six key areas that align with our vision for a health–literate public health system.

Visit the Organizational Health Literacy webpage to

• Download the toolkit (English available now, Spanish coming soon)
• Explore additional supplementary companion materials
• Complete the assessment tool

Join us for a webinar on April 24 to learn more and become acquainted with the toolkit, website and supplementary materials.  Registration is now open. Learn more and register on our Eventbrite page.

This page describes personal and organizational health literacy.

The definition of health literacy has evolved over time to better reflect what we’ve learned along the way. The Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion’s Healthy People initiative sets national standards every decade to improve health and well-being for all. CCDPH uses the two-part definition of health literacy published in Healthy People 2030:

Personal health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the ability to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others.

Organizational health literacy is the degree to which organizations equitably enable individuals to find, understand, and use information and services to make health-related decisions for themselves and others.

The most equitable and effective approach to improving health literacy is to reimagine the overly complex systems that put such large demands and expectations on community members in the first place. As part of CCDPH’s mission to advance health equity, we are committed to supporting organizations in their journey to become more health literate and to building a more health literate public health system in Cook County.

Please use the sidebar at right to explore health-literacy-related content on our website.