Health Literacy
IHS 2023 HEALTH LITERACY ANNUAL AWARD
The IHS Workgroup on Health Literacy invites you to nominate outstanding teams, programs, or individuals (federal employees only) for their commitment and contribution to advance health literacy. Nominations are to be submitted for one of the following categories:
- Individual Award
- Team Award
Individual Award and Team Award Nomination Form [PDF - 723 KB]
The IHS Health Literacy Award nomination must be initiated and signed by the nominator and must be received by 5 pm ET on September 14, 2023.
The individual and team award winners will be featured in a blog, receive a certificate, and federal employees will received 8-hours of Administrative Leave. Commissioned Officers will receive a certificate and thank you letter. The IHS Health Literacy Committee will review all submissions under each category and will announce the awardees in October 2023.
2022 IHS Health Literacy Award Recipients
Congratulations to the 2022 IHS Health Literacy Award recipients for the individual and team categories:
Individual Category
- Violeta M. Pantaleon, RN, Northern Navajo Medical Center
Team Category
- Mescalero Service Unit – Opioid Stewardship Program
Health literacy is defined as the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand health information and services needed to make appropriate decisions about their health. People must understand how to access and apply health information to seek medical care, take medications correctly, and follow prescribed treatments. Health literacy involves reading as well and other skills (e.g. writing, listening, speaking, numeracy, and critical analysis) to perform health-related tasks. According to a national survey, over one-third of the adult population has limited health literacy. Limited health literacy is associated with medication errors, increased health care costs, and inadequate knowledge, and inability to manage chronic health conditions.
Learn more about health literacy:
- Watch the online IHS Introduction to Health Literacy training for Tribal and Urban Indian Health programs.
- IHS employees can complete the online IHS Introduction to Health Literacy training available through the HHS Learning Management System.
- IHS White paper on Health Literacy [PDF - 121 KB]
- The National Library of Medicine’s Health Literacy Page
- The Center for Disease Control’s Health Literacy Page
- The National Institutes of Health Health Literacy Page
- The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit
- The AHRQ Pharmacy Health Literacy Center