Resources for Community Sector Workers and Organisations
We have collected a range of health literacy resources for the community sector. These will support you to promote health literacy with your clients and improve organisational health literacy.
- Canberra Health Literacy on Youtube
The Health Care Consumers' Association of the ACT's Youtube Channel hosts this playlist of previous Canberra Health Literacy Network webinars and panel discussions.
- HCCA Factsheet: Writing Clear Health Information
This factsheet includes key steps and tips to make written information clear for consumers. Clearly written health information makes it easy to:
- find the information we need
- understand how it applies to our situation
- put it into action.
These tips can be used by anyone who is writing about health or reviewing consumer information.
- HCCA Inclusive Health Care Factsheets for Health Providers
Making health services safe and welcoming for all consumers is important to supporting individual health literacy and creating a health literate environment. To support workers and services, HCCA has published 5 free resources for health providers who want to become more inclusive. They include:
These resources include links to key resources and advocacy organisations to help you keep improving your inclusive practice.
- Enliven Organisational Health Literacy Self-assessment Resource (2013)
This resource was developed in Victoria by the School of Primary Health Care at Monash University for Enliven, a health promotion charity.This self-assessment tool is for health and social service organisations and is designed to guide and inform their development as health literate organisations. It is based on the 10 attributes of health literate organisations identified by the American Institute of Medicine. Each attribute has been operationalised as a set of evidence-based processes, outputs or outcomes that together constitute an appropriate response to health literacy at the organisational level.
- HeLLO Tas – A toolkit for Health Literacy Learning Organisations (2019) This toolkit was developed in Tasmania by community sector workers for community sector and smaller community health organisations. It provides a step-by-step process for doing a self-assessment and developing a Health Literacy Action Plan, practical tools to help you with these tasks, links to accreditation standards, resources and further reading material. It will help you see what your organisation is already doing well and what else you could do to further enhance your services. It can also help you to meet quality improvement standards relating to outcomes for clients, consumer rights, evidence-based practice, and community development.
- Make it Easy: A Handbook for Becoming a Health Literate Organisation (2019)This guide was developed in Victoria as a collaboration between HealthWest Partnership and Inner North West Primary Care Partnership. It is designed for health services but is also easy for community sector organisations to use.
This toolkit provides: a simple definition of what it means to be a health literate organisation, an explanation of the five requirements for being a health literate organisation, a five-step approach to becoming a health literate organisation and tools to help you get there.
This resource was developed in Victoria by the School of Primary Health Care at Monash University for 
This toolkit was developed in Tasmania by community sector workers for community sector and smaller community health organisations. It provides a step-by-step process for doing a self-assessment and developing a Health Literacy Action Plan, practical tools to help you with these tasks, links to accreditation standards, resources and further reading material. It will help you see what your organisation is already doing well and what else you could do to further enhance your services. It can also help you to meet quality improvement standards relating to outcomes for clients, consumer rights, evidence-based practice, and community development.
This guide was developed in Victoria as a collaboration between HealthWest Partnership and Inner North West Primary Care Partnership. It is designed for health services but is also easy for community sector organisations to use.- Exploring good practice use of group identity labels to represent people of diverse sexualities, genders, bodies and relationships (2021)
A discussion paper developed by Meridian ACT. This paper presents the most up-to-date research on emerging practices in terminology use, offering an essential resource to organisations wishing to connect with the diverse communities they serve. This paper aims to foster and inform conversations about what terms are most appropriate when referring to people of diverse sexualities, genders, sex characteristics and relationships.
- HCCA Factsheet: Writing Clear Health Information
This factsheet includes key steps and tips to make written information clear for consumers. Clearly written health information makes it easy to:
- find the information we need
- understand how it applies to our situation
- put it into action.
These tips can be used by anyone who is writing about health or reviewing consumer information.
- Health Care for People Who Need Extra Support (2022)
This Guide, developed by Dr Rachel Skoss at Notre Dame University, is for anyone supporting a person with intellectual disability or a person who needs support to understand and navigate the health system. It is a guide to health literacy which includes practical information and links to resources to build the person’s knowledge and skills in managing their own health and support them to navigate the health system.
Last Updated on 3 January, 2024.