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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.
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Organizational health literacy 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.
These definitions are a change from the health literacy definition used in Healthy People 2010 and Healthy People 2020: “the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.” The new definitions follows: Emphasize people’s ability to use health information rather than just understand it; focus on the ability to make “well-informed” decisions rather than “appropriate” ones; incorporate a public health perspective; and acknowledge that organizations have a responsibility to address health literacy