Is Our Pharmacy Meeting Patients' Needs? Pharmacy Health Literacy Assessment Tool User's Guide

This pharmacy health literacy tool was designed to capture perspectives of three critical audiences-objective auditors, pharmacy staff, and patients. The three parts of the assessment are complementary and designed to form a comprehensive assessment. Although the assessment was designed to be used in outpatient pharmacies of large, urban, public hospitals that primarily serve a minority population, it can be adapted for use in other pharmacy and non-pharmacy environments.

Go to the Pharmacy Health Literacy Center for both technical assistance and information on related AHRQ tools.

By Jacobson KL, Gazmararian JA, Kripalani S, et al.

Contents

Introduction
Part I: Assessment Tour of the Pharmacy
Part II: Survey of Pharmacy Staff
Part III: Pharmacy Patient Focus Groups
Part IV: Using Assessment Results
References

Appendixes

Appendix 1: Conducting a Health Literacy Assessment—Flow Chart
Appendix 2: Health Literacy Assessment Tour Guide
Appendix 3: Health Literacy Assessment Survey of Pharmacy Staff
Appendix 4: Samples Tables and Analyses for Pharmacy Staff Survey
Appendix 5: Health Literacy Assessment Facilitator's Guide for Patient Focus Groups
Appendix 6: Sample Outline for Report of Focus Group Results

This user's guide was produced under contract to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) under Contract No. 290-00-0011 T07. The AHRQ Task Order Officer for this project was Cindy Brach, M.P.P. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation provided funding for this guide. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Program Officer was Pamela S. Dickson, M.B.A.

The findings and conclusions in this document are those of the authors, who are responsible for its contents; the findings and conclusions do not necessarily represent the views of AHRQ or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Therefore, no statement in this report should be construed as an official position of AHRQ or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services or the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.