· Executive Brief
National Health Education Week 2026
Move from isolated campaign activity to one connected operating plan across internal and community partners.
Leadership signal
Use National Health Education Week to examine the system behind the message.
A public-facing observance can involve communications, operations, service lines, community partners, and leadership. Before publishing activity, align the message with real routes, available support, ownership, escalation, and the method used to answer questions that the campaign may generate.
Start by distinguishing what is known from what the organization still needs to learn. A campaign plan, communication volume, or meeting count does not establish that a route is usable. Leaders need direct listening, clear ownership, locally defined measures, and a method for keeping exceptions visible.
Executive opening
Health education is an operating function, not a campaign output
Most health systems treat health education as something produced: a handout, a class, a portal message or a community fair. In practice, it is something delivered and confirmed at every visit, discharge and outreach encounter. When it fails, the failure is quiet. Patients go home with instructions they cannot use, and the gap surfaces later as an error, a missed appointment or a return visit.
Direct observation shows how often that happens. In a quality improvement study of 33 discharges at two urban tertiary-care teaching hospitals, 81% of patients received no guidance on red-flag warning signs.[13] In the same study, only one patient was asked to teach back their understanding of the plan.[13] These are not knowledge gaps among clinicians. They are design gaps in how discharge work is organized. Because teaching is spread across nursing, medicine, pharmacy and community programs, it rarely has one accountable owner.
The evidence on what structured education can change is encouraging. A meta-analysis of randomized trials found readmission of 9.1% with discharge communication interventions versus 13.5% in control groups.[14] In the community, a randomized trial tested group education and navigation delivered by community health workers.[5] Mammograms were completed by 39.9% of women in the intervention arm and 20.3% in the comparison arm.[5] Both of these findings come from randomized designs, which strengthens confidence that the education itself made a difference.
National Health Education Week is a practical moment for leaders to ask who teaches, how understanding is confirmed, whether materials are readable, and whether any of it is measured. The sections below summarize peer-reviewed evidence on comprehension, transitions, access, equity, the education workforce and organizational health literacy. They sit beside the executive guidance already on this page and give boards and operating leaders a shared factual base. The goal is not more education activity. It is fewer moments in which a patient has to guess.
Current evidence
Understanding is often assumed, rarely verified
The first problem is the material itself. A systematic review of 17 studies covering 1,124 patient education materials for head and neck cancer found mean Flesch-Kincaid grade levels between 8.8 and 14.8.[11] None of the 17 studies reported a mean reading level of grade 6 or lower.[11] Among the eight studies that measured it, inadequate health literacy ranged from 11.9% to 47.0% of patients.[11] Materials written above the reading level of many patients shift the burden of understanding onto the people least able to carry it.
The second problem is the gap between feeling informed and being able to explain. A study of 86 patients and relatives at two teaching hospitals in China scored functional health literacy during informed consent on a 10-point scale.[10] The median teach-back score was 4.0, while the median perception score was 8.0.[10] Being a patient rather than a relative, and having lower education, were independent risk factors for inadequate functional health literacy.[10] Satisfaction or a signed form does not establish comprehension. Clinicians who rely on a nod or a signature may never see that gap.
Structured approaches can close part of that gap. In a randomized trial at a tertiary U.S. children’s hospital, 198 caregivers were assigned to health literacy-informed discharge counseling or standard counseling.[12] An incorrect medication dose was measured by 30.4% of caregivers in the intervention group and 54.2% in the standard group.[12] Correct reporting of two or more medication adverse effects was 78.9% with the intervention and 18.8% with standard counseling.[12]
Effects extend beyond a single hospital. The discharge communication meta-analysis drew on 60 trials with 16,070 patients.[14] Treatment adherence was 86.1% with intervention versus 79.0% in control groups, and patient satisfaction was 60.9% versus 49.5%.[14] Trials varied in design and risk of bias, so leaders should read these figures as direction and magnitude, not as a guaranteed local result.
Taken together, these studies support three operating conclusions. Comprehension cannot be inferred from the existence of a handout, a signed form or a satisfaction score. Structured methods that confirm understanding can reduce errors that matter to safety. And the benefit depends on delivery: who teaches, when, in what language and with what follow-up. Those conclusions shape the rest of this brief, because each one points to an organizational decision rather than an individual clinician’s choice.
Figure 1
Where health education breaks, and what structured education changes
Percent of patients, caregivers or participants, as reported in each study. Values are copied from the cited studies [5], [12], [13]; none is estimated.
Data note. The bars come from three different studies, populations and outcomes, so comparisons across studies are an indirect comparison; only the paired bars within each randomized trial compare like with like.
Limitation. The discharge figure is from a small observational sample; the two trials were conducted in single regions and may not generalize to every health system.
Figure data (5 rows)
| Measure | Value | Population, setting and year as reported | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Discharged with no guidance on red-flag warning signs | 81% | 27 of 33 observed discharges at two urban tertiary-care teaching hospitals, 2018–2019 [13] | [13] |
| Caregivers measuring an incorrect dose after standard counseling | 54.2% | 39 of 72 caregivers, standard counseling arm, randomized trial at a tertiary U.S. children’s hospital [12] | [12] |
| Caregivers measuring an incorrect dose after health literacy-informed counseling | 30.4% | 24 of 79 caregivers, intervention arm of the same trial [12] | [12] |
| Mammogram completed, comparison arm | 20.3% | Low-income Latina women in Houston not up to date on screening, delayed-intervention comparison arm [5] | [5] |
| Mammogram completed with community health worker education and navigation | 39.9% | Intervention arm of the same randomized trial, six-month follow-up [5] | [5] |
Continuum of care
Education fails most often at the handoff
Discharge is the point where teaching matters most and time is shortest. In the observational discharge study, 8 of 30 patients with at least one medication change (27%) received no verbal instruction about that change.[13] Fifteen of 31 patients (48%) were not told the reason for their follow-up appointments.[13] Eighteen of 33 (55%) received no instructions on managing their condition after leaving the hospital.[13]
Those gaps do not close on their own once the patient is home. A randomized trial in an accountable care organization population tested community health worker support after discharge from six general medicine units at one academic medical center.[15] Among 550 patients analyzed, the intervention was associated with lower odds of 30-day readmission (odds ratio 0.44) and of missed clinic appointments (odds ratio 0.56).[15] The education role continued after discharge, in the home and the community.
Longer-term conditions show a similar pattern. In a multicenter trial at five dialysis centers in Denver, 139 Hispanic and Latino adults receiving in-center hemodialysis were randomized to community health worker support or standard care.[6] Median change in patient activation was 1.8 points with the intervention and -2.2 points with standard care.[6] Activation reflects the knowledge, skill and confidence to manage one’s own care, which is the practical aim of health education. Both trials measured results after the visit ended, where education either holds or fails.
For executives, the lesson is structural. Teaching that happens in one setting and is never confirmed or reinforced in the next is unlikely to hold. Education responsibilities need an owner on both sides of each transition, a way to confirm what the patient understood, and a route for questions after the patient leaves.
In practice, that means connecting inpatient teaching to the first ambulatory or community contact. The receiving team should know what was taught, what the patient could explain back and what remained unclear. A follow-up call, a community health worker visit or a pharmacy review can then reinforce the same plan rather than start over. Without that link, each setting repeats partial teaching, and patients hear slightly different instructions from each one. Executives can ask for a single, shared education record that travels with the patient across the transition.
Figure 3
Why the pathway breaks
People
- Physicians spend minutes, not tens of minutes, at the bedside on discharge day
- Nurses carry the teaching load without protected time
- Community health workers not integrated with clinical teams
Process
- Teach-back rarely used to confirm understanding
- Medication changes and follow-up purpose not explained
- No education owner after the patient leaves
Technology
- Portal-first education assumes digital health literacy
- Automated simplification without clinical review
- After-visit documents above plain-language reading levels
Environment
- Rushed discharge timing
- Language discordance between staff and families
- Limited community linkage for follow-up
Policy
- Health literacy treated as an individual skill, not an organizational duty
- No plain-language approval standard for materials
- Unstable funding for community health worker roles
Measurement
- Satisfaction or signed forms used as proxies for comprehension
- Results not stratified by language or education
- No organizational health literacy self-assessment
Unranked qualitative cause-and-effect diagram for the outcome in the box: Patients and caregivers leave care encounters without confirmed understanding of medications, warning signs and next steps Causes are assembled from the cited literature [1], [4], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [13], [15]; categories are not weighted and their order carries no meaning.
Data note. Qualitative; no frequencies are implied.
Limitation. Causes drawn from published studies may not all apply locally; validate them with frontline teams.
Figure data (6 rows)
| Category | Causes drawn from the cited literature |
|---|---|
| People | Physicians spend minutes, not tens of minutes, at the bedside on discharge day; Nurses carry the teaching load without protected time; Community health workers not integrated with clinical teams |
| Process | Teach-back rarely used to confirm understanding; Medication changes and follow-up purpose not explained; No education owner after the patient leaves |
| Technology | Portal-first education assumes digital health literacy; Automated simplification without clinical review; After-visit documents above plain-language reading levels |
| Environment | Rushed discharge timing; Language discordance between staff and families; Limited community linkage for follow-up |
| Policy | Health literacy treated as an individual skill, not an organizational duty; No plain-language approval standard for materials; Unstable funding for community health worker roles |
| Measurement | Satisfaction or signed forms used as proxies for comprehension; Results not stratified by language or education; No organizational health literacy self-assessment |
Access
The channel shapes who can learn
Health systems increasingly move education into portals, text messages and video. That shift helps some patients and leaves others behind. A study of caregivers of hospitalized children measured digital health literacy on a scale of 1 to 4.[9] Non-Latinx White caregivers had an adjusted mean score of 3.44 for ability to engage with digital services.[9] Spanish-preferring Latinx caregivers scored 2.97 on the same domain.[9] A difference of that size on a four-point scale suggests portal instructions alone will not reach every family equally. A portal-first education strategy can widen gaps it was meant to close.
Language-concordant, in-person outreach can reach people that digital channels miss. A randomized trial followed 287 older adult and caregiver pairs for six months.[2] A language-concordant community health worker program achieved 16.7% linkage to medical services for dementia care, compared with 0% in the control group.[2] The same trial found caregiver outcomes largely unchanged, which is a reminder that linkage alone does not resolve every downstream need.[2]
Community-based education can also improve preventive service use. The Houston trial enrolled low-income Latina women who were not up to date on screening.[5] Group education with optional coaching and navigation raised cervical screening completion to 55.8%, compared with 27.4% in the comparison arm.[5] The program paired teaching with practical help to complete the next step.
New tools may lower another barrier: reading difficulty. A study of large language models in rheumatology patient education found that rewriting reduced the Flesch-Kincaid grade level from 15.06 to 10.52.[7] That improvement still left text well above the grade 6 benchmark used in the readability review.[11] Simplification tools can help authors, but they do not replace plain-language review, translation quality checks or testing with the people who will use the material.
Access to health education therefore depends on channel design as much as content. Leaders can confirm that every education pathway offers at least one non-digital option. They can check that preferred language is recorded and used, and that classes are held where and when people can attend. Each channel should also have a way for people to ask a question and get an answer from a named team. Testing a pathway with a small group of intended users usually reveals barriers that internal review misses. Common examples are confusing portal steps, unclear phone menus and materials that assume prior knowledge.
Executive guidance · System route
Connect the week to an accountable system route.
Use this route as a discussion framework. Replace each stage with the organization’s approved process, qualified roles, current service capacity, and applicable requirements. Do not infer a clinical protocol from the observance title.
The route at a glance
- Define the purpose
- Align the entry point
- Coordinate community participation
- Manage response
- Review the campaign
Reliability rule: Every stage needs a named owner, an observable status, an approved escalation path, and a defined signal that shows whether responsibility moved or remained unresolved.
Define the purpose
Name the audience, intended action, approved message, and limits of what the campaign can responsibly promise.
Align the entry point
Connect every communication channel to current information and a clearly identified receiving role or team.
Coordinate community participation
Align communication, inclusive participation, locally relevant partners, support, and follow-through without presenting a universal health prescription.
Manage response
Keep questions, referrals, exceptions, and unresolved work visible until an accountable receiver accepts them.
Review the campaign
Compare intended action with local process signals and partner feedback, then document the improvement to carry forward.
Figure 2
The system route as one flow
The five stages of the system route described in this brief, drawn as one flow with a learning loop back to the start. The stages are the page’s original executive guidance, not a clinical protocol.
Data note. Shows sequence and handoffs only; it carries no counts or rates.
Limitation. Local processes may add, merge or reorder stages under organizational policy.
Figure data (5 rows)
| Stage | What the stage requires |
|---|---|
| Define the purpose | Name the audience, intended action, approved message, and limits of what the campaign can responsibly promise. |
| Align the entry point | Connect every communication channel to current information and a clearly identified receiving role or team. |
| Coordinate community participation | Align communication, inclusive participation, locally relevant partners, support, and follow-through without presenting a universal health prescription. |
| Manage response | Keep questions, referrals, exceptions, and unresolved work visible until an accountable receiver accepts them. |
| Review the campaign | Compare intended action with local process signals and partner feedback, then document the improvement to carry forward. |
Equity and trust
Organizational health literacy moves responsibility to the system
Health literacy has long been framed as an individual skill. Organizational health literacy reframes it as the responsibility of the organization to make information, services and care pathways easy to find, understand and use.[1] Austrian authors describe this as a shift that can help mitigate socio-economic effects on health and promote equity.[4] In Austria, health literacy support is legally defined as an organizational responsibility of primary care settings, and health literacy questions appear in routine patient surveys.[4]
Public health agencies are applying the same idea. A large suburban county health department developed an open-access organizational health literacy toolkit through a user-centered design process.[3] The toolkit is organized around six domains, including leadership and organizational transformation, workforce development, accessibility of information and services, and community engagement and outreach.[3] Hospitals and health systems can align their own work with partners who use a similar frame. That alignment matters because people move between clinical and community settings, and conflicting materials erode confidence in both.
Equity gaps are measurable when organizations look for them. Lower education was an independent risk factor for inadequate functional health literacy during hospital informed consent.[10] Spanish-preferring caregivers reported lower digital health literacy across all three measured domains.[9] Language preference and education level each pointed to a different part of the gap, so one fix will not serve every group. Aggregate satisfaction scores can hide both patterns, so stratified review is essential.
Trust is built through who delivers education as well as what is said. The trials of community health workers supporting Latino patients receiving dialysis, Latina women due for screening and older adults seeking dementia care each relied on community health workers delivering outreach tailored to the population served.[6][5][2] These programs suggest that trusted messengers and practical navigation work together. Neither substitutes for the other.
Executives can turn this frame into practice in several ways. Education outcomes can be reviewed by preferred language, education level, age and digital access rather than only in aggregate. Community members can help design and test materials before release. Partnerships with public health agencies and community organizations can share a common vocabulary and toolkit. And leaders can treat a persistent gap in understanding for one group as a system defect to correct, not as a characteristic of the people affected.
Human infrastructure
Someone must own the teaching, and they need time to do it
Education depends on people with time at the bedside. In the discharge observation study, nurses spent a median of 22.5 minutes with patients on discharge day.[13] Interns spent a median of 4.0 minutes, senior residents 1.0 minute and attending physicians 3.0 minutes.[13] Nurses carry much of the teaching load, yet their education work is rarely staffed, scheduled or measured as a distinct task. When discharge is compressed, that time is the first to be squeezed.
A 2026 mini-review describes nurses’ contribution to organizational health literacy as under-documented.[1] The authors identify roles in clear communication, care navigation, shared decision-making, co-designing information resources and quality improvement.[1] They argue that nurse-led organizational health literacy requires leadership support, workforce development, assessment tools, consumer partnership and integration into quality, safety and accreditation structures.[1] That list describes infrastructure, not individual effort.
Community health workers form a second layer of the education workforce. In the trials summarized above, they delivered group education and navigation, post-discharge support and language-concordant linkage to care.[5][15][2] Each program was built around a defined role and a link to clinical services. When those conditions are missing, community health workers can become an isolated pilot rather than part of the care model.
Workforce development appears as a core domain in the county health department toolkit.[3] For health systems, this means teaching and teach-back become trained, observed and supported skills rather than individual habits. Leaders can ask whether education competencies appear in orientation, annual review and unit staffing assumptions, and whether community health workers have supervision and a career path.
A practical first step is an inventory of who currently teaches patients and caregivers, in which settings and for how long. That inventory often shows that education depends on a few experienced nurses, educators or pharmacists whose time is absorbed by other tasks. It may also show community health worker roles funded by short-term grants with no plan for continuation. Making education work visible in staffing models, job descriptions and budgets is the precondition for making it reliable. It also gives frontline staff a clear signal that teaching is part of the job, not something done when time allows.
Executive guidance · Operating dashboard
Review reliability, not campaign activity alone.
Do not publish a number until the organization defines its numerator, denominator where relevant, owner, source system, exclusions, review cadence, and limits. The candidates below are management prompts, not benchmarks or reported results.
Four operating signals
Each signal pairs an executive question with one candidate local measure, set out below.
Executive guidance · Signal
Message alignment
Do channels and partners communicate one current and appropriately bounded route?
- Candidate local measure
- Content review status, conflicting instructions, corrections, and unresolved questions.
Executive guidance · Signal
Response ownership
Does every campaign-generated request reach an accountable receiver?
- Candidate local measure
- Routing, acknowledgment, repeat contact, unresolved work, and escalation signals.
Executive guidance · Signal
Participation usability
Can intended participants understand and use the route without avoidable access barriers?
- Candidate local measure
- Locally defined participation barriers, support requests, incomplete routes, partner feedback, and corrective actions.
Executive guidance · Signal
Action closure
Did leaders complete and verify the improvement selected for the campaign window?
- Candidate local measure
- Assigned action, status, evidence of completion, and post-action review.
Figure 4
The operating system behind the dashboard
The four operating signals from this brief’s dashboard, each tied to the candidate owner named in the executive scorecard, around one accountable route. Drawn from the page’s original executive guidance.
Data note. Structural diagram; no measured values.
Limitation. Owners are candidates to be confirmed locally.
Figure data (4 rows)
| Operating signal | Candidate owner |
|---|---|
| Message alignment | Executive sponsor and operational lead |
| Response ownership | Operational owner and participating teams |
| Participation usability | Sending and receiving owners |
| Action closure | Improvement owner and executive sponsor |
Executive guidance · Handoff workflow
Transfer responsibility with acknowledgment and visibility.
A handoff is reliable only when the sending party knows who is expected to receive the work, the receiving party acknowledges responsibility, and any unresolved exception remains visible. Local policy and qualified judgment control the actual process.
How responsibility moves
Lane A
From message to accepted ownership
- Confirm the approved message and intended audience.
- Publish the actual entry point and receiving role.
- Acknowledge receipt using the locally approved method.
- Escalate when ownership or response remains unclear.
Lane B
From accepted ownership to verified follow-through
- Record the next accountable owner and visible status.
- State the participating partner, approved contact, support available, and next owner without promising a health result.
- Keep unresolved work visible across boundaries.
- Confirm closure or document the continuing exception.
Executive guidance · Executive scorecard
Connect operating signals to accountable executive review.
The scorecard keeps review focused on decisions. Leaders should set definitions locally, examine variation without overclaiming cause, and pair quantitative signals with the experience of people who use and operate the route.
Who reviews what
- Executive sponsor and operational lead
- Operational owner and participating teams
- Sending and receiving owners
- Improvement owner and executive sponsor
Candidate owners named in the scorecard, confirmed locally.
| Operating signal | Executive question | Candidate owner | Suggested review point |
|---|---|---|---|
| Message alignment | Do channels and partners communicate one current and appropriately bounded route? | Executive sponsor and operational lead | At campaign launch and close |
| Response ownership | Does every campaign-generated request reach an accountable receiver? | Operational owner and participating teams | At a locally defined cadence |
| Participation usability | Can intended participants understand and use the route without avoidable access barriers? | Sending and receiving owners | At a locally defined cadence |
| Action closure | Did leaders complete and verify the improvement selected for the campaign window? | Improvement owner and executive sponsor | Until action is verified |
Figure 5
Control points for reliable health education
| Control point | Risk if missing | Owner | Evidence of control |
|---|---|---|---|
| Teach-back used for medications, warning signs and follow-up at discharge | Patients leave believing they understand but cannot explain the plan | Chief nursing officer with hospital medicine lead | Observed or documented teach-back rate on sampled discharges |
| Plain-language standard applied before patient materials are released | Materials written above the reading level of many patients | Patient education committee chair | Share of active materials meeting the approved reading standard |
| Clinical review of any automatically simplified or translated content | Shortened text omits or distorts important information | Chief medical information officer with clinical content owners | Review log for every rewritten item before release |
| Language and digital access review for each education channel | Portal-first education widens gaps for language-preferring groups | Patient experience and equity leads | Comprehension and channel use stratified by preferred language |
| Defined community health worker role linked to discharge and follow-up | Teaching stops at the hospital door | Population health director | Share of eligible patients contacted after discharge and missed appointments |
| Periodic organizational health literacy self-assessment reported to the board | No shared view of system-level progress | Chief quality officer and board quality committee | Completed assessment with standards scored and an action plan |
Control points derived from the cited evidence [2], [3], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [15] and this brief’s executive guidance.
Data note. Each row is a control to verify, not a measured result.
Limitation. Owners and evidence of control must follow local policy and applicable requirements.
Public communication
Clear public communication starts with measurable organizational standards
Public communication during an observance week reaches people through the same materials, portals and staff that serve patients every day. If those materials are written at a grade level many patients cannot read, the campaign repeats the problem it is meant to address. The readability review found no included study with a mean grade level of 6 or lower.[11] A plain-language standard, applied before content is published, is a simple and visible commitment.
Artificial intelligence can support that standard but needs governance. In the rheumatology study, a large language model reduced source text from 3,517 words to 446 words while lowering the reading level.[7] Shorter text can omit important detail, and automated rewriting can introduce errors. Clinical review, translation checks and testing with patients and community members remain necessary before any rewritten content is released. Governance should specify who may use these tools, for which content, and who signs off.
Confirmation is part of communication. The informed consent study found a wide gap between how well people felt they understood and how well they could explain the information back.[10] Only one patient in the discharge observation study was asked to teach back the plan.[13] A document can be clear and still be misunderstood. Only a conversation that asks the person to explain the plan reveals that. Communication standards should therefore cover the conversation as well as the document.
Measurement turns these commitments into governance. A European feasibility study piloted a hospital self-assessment tool for organizational health literacy in seven hospitals across six countries.[8] The tool contains eight standards, 21 sub-standards and 141 indicators.[8] Instruments like this give boards a structured way to review progress, compare units and set priorities. They also help leaders report honestly on what the observance changed and what still needs work.
For the observance itself, the most credible public message is a specific commitment rather than a general one. An organization might publish its plain-language standard, describe how it confirms understanding at discharge or invite community members to test a set of materials. It can then report back on what changed. Messages of that kind show the public that health education is part of quality and safety. They also give staff a concrete reason to engage with the week beyond awareness activities.
Executive guidance · 90-day plan
Use 90 days to correct one visible operating barrier.
The time boxes below are a management framework, not a clinical timeline. Adjust them to risk, scope, governance, resources, stakeholder participation, and applicable review requirements.
Ninety days, three moves
- Days 1–30See the current route
- Days 31–60Build the reliable path
- Days 61–90Make the change visible
Days 1–30 · Listen and map
See the current route
- Name an executive sponsor and an operational owner.
- Listen to people using the route and representative frontline teams.
- Map how National Health Education Week communications connect to real entry points, owners, transitions, and escalation.
- Select one recurring barrier that the organization can responsibly address.
Days 31–60 · Design and test
Build the reliable path
- Define the trigger, receiving owner, required information, acknowledgment, escalation, and closure signal.
- Validate the design with every sending and receiving team involved.
- Validate one participation route with intended users and correct a verified usability or coordination barrier.
- Test the route in more than one representative setting or operating period where practical.
Days 61–90 · Implement and verify
Make the change visible
- Launch the redesigned route with a small set of locally defined measures.
- Review unresolved work and recurring friction using a learning approach.
- Correct implementation barriers and record who owns each remaining dependency.
- Report what changed, what evidence was reviewed, and what still requires live oversight.
Figure 6
The 90-day plan on one timeline
The 90-day plan from this brief drawn as a timeline: each action sits in the 30-day window the plan assigns it. The full wording of each action is in the figure data and in the plan above.
Data note. Time boxes are a management framework, not a clinical timeline.
Limitation. Durations are uniform 30-day windows; real tasks may span windows.
Figure data (12 rows)
| Window | Action |
|---|---|
| Days 1–30 · Listen and map | Name an executive sponsor and an operational owner. |
| Days 1–30 · Listen and map | Listen to people using the route and representative frontline teams. |
| Days 1–30 · Listen and map | Map how National Health Education Week communications connect to real entry points, owners, transitions, and escalation. |
| Days 1–30 · Listen and map | Select one recurring barrier that the organization can responsibly address. |
| Days 31–60 · Design and test | Define the trigger, receiving owner, required information, acknowledgment, escalation, and closure signal. |
| Days 31–60 · Design and test | Validate the design with every sending and receiving team involved. |
| Days 31–60 · Design and test | Validate one participation route with intended users and correct a verified usability or coordination barrier. |
| Days 31–60 · Design and test | Test the route in more than one representative setting or operating period where practical. |
| Days 61–90 · Implement and verify | Launch the redesigned route with a small set of locally defined measures. |
| Days 61–90 · Implement and verify | Review unresolved work and recurring friction using a learning approach. |
| Days 61–90 · Implement and verify | Correct implementation barriers and record who owns each remaining dependency. |
| Days 61–90 · Implement and verify | Report what changed, what evidence was reviewed, and what still requires live oversight. |
Executive guidance · Leadership close
Pair recognition with a system people can trust.
Recognition matters. It becomes durable when leaders also listen, clarify the route, support the people operating it, close an identified gap, and report the result without claiming more than the evidence supports.
Leadership commitment
Connect the message to one usable, measured, and sustained operating change.
Executive action kit · Week observance
Turn National Health Education Week into accountable action.
Move from isolated campaign activity to one connected operating plan across internal and community partners.
Leadership focus
Use this observance to examine trustworthy information, prevention access, and community connection. Select one verified barrier, assign an accountable owner, and carry the improvement beyond the campaign window.
Workforce lens
Ask whether staffing, role clarity, training, tools, workload, and escalation support the people operating the community information, trusted connection, service navigation, and follow-through pathway.
Patient and community lens
Make the approved first step clear. Test whether a person can move from information to an acknowledged next action without navigating conflicting instructions.
Equity and access lens
Review who helped design the message, which communities can access the route, and whose barriers remain invisible in aggregate measures.
Five-minute briefing
Inspect the operating sequence
Listen with community members, trusted organizations, public health, clinical services, and operational leaders. Find one a message that does not connect to a usable service or an accountable partner, then test the locally approved route from entry through acknowledged follow-through.
- Define the purpose
- Align the entry point
- Coordinate community participation
- Manage response
- Review the campaign
Leadership actions for this week
- Name an executive sponsor and frontline operating owner.
- Ask people using and operating the pathway where ownership becomes unclear.
- Test one representative route from first question to acknowledged next step.
- Select one barrier that can be corrected without overstating the evidence.
- Set a review date and define how completion will be verified.
Candidate measures
Define every numerator, denominator where relevant, owner, data source, exclusions, cadence, and limitation locally. These are management prompts, not external benchmarks.
- Content review status, conflicting instructions, corrections, and unresolved questions.
- Routing, acknowledgment, repeat contact, unresolved work, and escalation signals.
- Locally defined participation barriers, support requests, incomplete routes, partner feedback, and corrective actions.
Department readiness checklist
- The public and staff entry points match the actual approved process.
- A specific role accepts each request, referral, or escalation.
- Handoffs include acknowledgment and a visible unresolved state.
- Language, disability, digital, transportation, and trust barriers receive explicit review.
- Communications do not introduce unsupported themes, statistics, or clinical advice.
- A named leader will review what changed after the observance.
Intended audiences
- Executive and Operational Leaders
- Public Health and Community Partners
Staff communication template
During National Health Education Week, our organization will connect awareness with a practical review of the community information, trusted connection, service navigation, and follow-through pathway. Use approved information, identify the correct entry point, confirm ownership when work moves, protect privacy, and escalate unresolved barriers through local channels.
Community communication template
National Health Education Week is an opportunity to share trustworthy information and make the next step easier to find. Use our approved channels for information and support. If a request changes hands, our goal is to keep ownership and follow-through visible.
Measurement worksheet
- Signal
- What observable condition will show whether the route works?
- Definition
- What is included, excluded, and counted?
- Owner
- Who reviews the signal and acts on exceptions?
- Cadence
- When will leaders review it?
- Equity check
- Which differences require protected, locally appropriate review?
- Closure
- What evidence will confirm the improvement was completed?
- Editorial review
- Completed
- Source records
- 2 listed under Authoritative resources
- Review standard
- Sourced facts remain separated from original executive guidance
- Clinical boundary
- No new statistical or clinical claim was added by this action kit
Sources and content boundary
Authoritative resources
Use note: All operating models, measures, scorecard questions, and action steps are original executive guidance. This article supports leadership planning and education. It does not replace clinical judgment, emergency procedures, legal advice, professional standards, organizational policy, or applicable federal, state, and local requirements.
Peer-reviewed references
References
Fifteen peer-reviewed sources, newest first. Each was individually verified through authenticated academic research databases. Bracketed numbers in the text link here; the original executive guidance on this page carries no citations because it is guidance, not a sourced claim. Sources last checked in those databases on .
- 1.Smith GD, Bonner A, Dinh TTH, Jagodage H. Nurses’ contribution to organizational health literacy: a conceptual analysis informed by a focused mini-review. Frontiers in Public Health. 2026;14:1856603. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1856603
- 2.Han HR, Perrin N, Yun JY, Min D, Kwon SC, Joo J, et al. Efficacy of a language-concordant community health worker intervention to improve community-to-clinic linkage for dementia care: results of the randomized trial PLAN. Alzheimer’s & Dementia. 2026;22(6):e71541. https://doi.org/10.1002/alz.71541
- 3.Seo-Lee A, Sampson M, Kim S, Moeller D. Practical applications of organizational health literacy: a conceptual framework and implementation in public health. Frontiers in Public Health. 2026;14:1801820. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1801820
- 4.Dietscher C, Straßmayr C, Gugglberger L, Eder J, Schütze D. Organizational health literacy in Austria—policy developments and results from a pilot assessment in primary care. Frontiers in Public Health. 2026;14:1802212. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1802212
- 5.Savas LS, Heredia NI, Huyan Y, Coan S, Martin S, Mantey DS, et al. A randomized controlled trial to evaluate an adapted community health worker-delivered breast and cervical cancer screening education and navigation intervention for underserved Latina adults. Frontiers in Oncology. 2026;16:1687113. https://doi.org/10.3389/fonc.2026.1687113
- 6.Cervantes L, Juarez-Colunga E, Powe NR, Flythe JE, Steiner JF, Cukor D, et al. Community Health Worker Support for Hispanic and Latino Individuals Receiving Hemodialysis: The Navigate-Kidney Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Internal Medicine. 2025;186(1):56-66. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2025.5305
- 7.Mendoza-Pinto C, Munguía-Realpozo P, Etchegaray-Morales I, Ramírez-Lara E, Solis-Poblano JC, García-Flores MA, et al. Artificial intelligence in patient education: evaluating large language models for understanding rheumatology literature. Frontiers in Digital Health. 2025;7:1623399. https://doi.org/10.3389/fdgth.2025.1623399
- 8.Straßmayr C, Finbråten HS, Bitzer EM, Bonaccorsi G, Cacciuttolo MG, Dudra J, et al. Assessing organizational health literacy in hospitals by using the International Self-Assessment Tool for Organizational Health Literacy of Hospitals – a feasibility study in six European countries. BMC Health Services Research. 2025;25(1):1265. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-025-13367-4
- 9.Crook S, Rosenbluth G, Glidden DV, Fernandez A, Lee CM, Avina L, et al. Variations in digital health literacy for pediatric caregivers of hospitalized children: implications for digital health equity. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. 2024;32(3):572-578. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocae305
- 10.Zhang D, Hu Z, Wu Z, Huang T, Huang T, Liu J, et al. Compromised informed consent due to functional health literacy challenges in Chinese hospitals. BMC Medical Ethics. 2024;25(1):91. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-024-01089-x
- 11.Armache M, Assi S, Wu R, Jain A, Lu J, Gordon L, et al. Readability of Patient Education Materials in Head and Neck Cancer: A Systematic Review. JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery. 2024;150(8):713-724. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamaoto.2024.1569
- 12.Carroll AR, Johnson JA, Stassun JC, Greevy RA, Mixon AS, Williams DJ. Health Literacy–Informed Communication to Reduce Discharge Medication Errors in Hospitalized Children: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Network Open. 2024;7(1):e2350969. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.50969
- 13.Trivedi SP, Corderman S, Berlinberg E, Schoenthaler A, Horwitz LI. Assessment of Patient Education Delivered at Time of Hospital Discharge. JAMA Internal Medicine. 2023;183(5):417-423. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2023.0070
- 14.Becker C, Zumbrunn S, Beck K, Vincent A, Loretz N, Müller J, et al. Interventions to Improve Communication at Hospital Discharge and Rates of Readmission: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. JAMA Network Open. 2021;4(8):e2119346. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.19346
- 15.Carter J, Hassan S, Walton A, Yu L, Donelan K, Thorndike AN. Effect of Community Health Workers on 30-Day Hospital Readmissions in an Accountable Care Organization Population: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Network Open. 2021;4(5):e2110936. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.10936
Claim-to-source matrix
What each source supports
Every sourced claim in the new sections maps to the references that support it, the section where it is used, and the limitation a reader should keep in mind. Original executive guidance carries no sources because it is guidance, not a finding.
| Claim group | Sources | Years | Used in | Limitation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Readability of patient education materials and prevalence of inadequate health literacy | [11] | 2024 | Current evidence | Head and neck cancer materials only; readability formulas measure text features, not comprehension. |
| Gap between perceived and demonstrated understanding during informed consent | [10] | 2024 | Current evidence | Small cross-sectional study at two teaching hospitals in one country. |
| Health literacy-informed discharge counseling and medication dosing errors | [12] | 2024 | Current evidence | Single children’s hospital; primary outcome available for 76.3% of randomized caregivers. |
| Discharge communication interventions, readmission, adherence and satisfaction | [14] | 2021 | Current evidence | Heterogeneous trials; risk of bias high or unclear in several pooled trials. |
| Observed gaps in discharge teaching and teach-back use; bedside time by role | [13] | 2023 | Continuum of care | Quality improvement study of 33 purposively sampled discharges at two urban teaching hospitals. |
| Community health worker support after discharge and in chronic care | [15] [6] | 2025, 2021 | Continuum of care | Single-site and single-region trials; outcomes differ (readmission versus patient activation). |
| Digital health literacy differences by language preference | [9] | 2024 | Access | Pediatric caregivers of hospitalized children; self-reported scale. |
| Language-concordant and community-based education and navigation | [2] [5] | 2026 | Access | Specific populations and cities; caregiver outcomes largely unchanged in the dementia trial. |
| Large language models for simplifying patient education text | [7] | 2025 | Access | Single specialty and source text; reading level remained above common plain-language benchmarks. |
| Organizational health literacy as a system responsibility, policy and toolkit | [4] [3] | 2026 | Equity and trust | Perspective and case study designs; no outcome data reported. |
| Nurses’ role in organizational health literacy | [1] | 2026 | Human infrastructure | Conceptual analysis with illustrative, not comprehensive, review. |
| Hospital organizational health literacy self-assessment tool | [8] | 2025 | Public communication | Feasibility pilot in seven European hospitals; not an outcome study. |
About the author
Greg Wahlstrom
MBAHCM
President and Chief Executive Officer, The Healthcare Executive
View Greg’s profile©2014 – 2026 The Healthcare Executive. All rights reserved.