Includes bibliographical references and index.

About health literacy -- Assessing health literacy -- Assessing readability with grade level formulas -- Business side of health literacy -- Communicating when patients feel scared, sick, and overwhelmed -- Confirming understanding : Feedback from interviews, focus groups, and usability testing -- Confirming understanding : Teach-back technique -- Decision aids and shared decision-making -- Document design -- Environment of care : Entrance, questions, signs, and Feng Shui -- Ethics of simplicity -- Forms and other reading-to-do documents -- General public : Talking with patients about what they learn from the media -- Humor and healing -- Interpreters and translations -- Jargon, acronyms, and other troublesome words -- Know your audience : Children and youth -- Know your audience : Culture and language -- Know your audience: emotions and cognition -- Know your audience : Hearing loss -- Know your audience : Literacy -- Know your audience : Older adults -- Know your audience : Vision problems -- Listening and speaking -- Metaphors, similes, and analogies -- Numeracy -- Organizational efforts : Health literacy at the community, state, and national levels -- Plain language -- Question-asking -- Regulatory and legal language -- Stories -- Teaching and learning -- Technology : Audio podcasts -- Technology: Blogs and other social media -- Technology : Email and text messaging -- Technology : Interactive multimedia -- Universal design in communication -- Visuals -- Writing for the web -- X-tras -- You : Empathy and humanity -- Zest and pizzazz.