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Abstract
Approximately 78 million adult Americans suffer from the consequences of low health literacy, including poor health outcomes, frequent emergency visits, and hospitalizations. This article discusses the development of the Health Literacy Now Web site for improving communication between health care providers and patients with low health literacy. The Web site promotes health literacy through three interrelated components: clear health information on chronic diseases and their management, tools to improve the health literacy environment of a clinical setting, and development of a health literacy manual to provide a step-by-step guidance for health care providers to communicate effectively with their patients. The article describes the need for this Web site, the methods used to develop it, and its application in both the inpatient and outpatient settings for improving patient-provider communication.