Health Literacy

Last updated: September 2025

What is health literacy?

Health literacy is ​the ability to access, understand, appraise and use health information to make health-related decisions. In the UK, we know from research by Gill Rowlands that 43% of adults struggle with text-based health information; rising to 61% if the health information includes numbers as well as text. In Cheshire East this is estimated to be 35% for text-based information, rising to 54% for information with both text and numbers.

NHS staff need to be aware of health literacy issues to support effective access to information. This toolkit provides information for healthcare professionals to aid in communication with patients. For patient information resources, visit our Patient Information Toolkit.

Health literacy e-learning

Click the link below to access E-Learning for Healthcare’s Health Literacy programme. This quick, 30-minute session explains the importance of health literacy and describes different techniques that can be used to better communicate with patients.

Teach back

You can’t always tell if someone has understood the information given to them just by asking. The teach back technique involves asking a patient to explain back to you, in their own words, what they’ve understood from the conversation.

Chunk and check

Patients can often be given a lot of information in one go. Chunk and check is a method of breaking down information into smaller chunks, and checking regularly to make sure that chunk has been understood. This can be used in combination with the teach back technique.