Improving Health Literacy to Protect Patient Safety February 06, 2007 Additional Resources An interactive map for determining local, state, county, town, and even subdivision literacy levels is available at www.casas.org/lit/litcode/search.cfm.  Guidance on setting performance and training expectations for medical interpreters is available from the National Council on Interpreting in Healthcare. The AHRQ Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture allows hospitals to compare their patient safety culture survey results with those of other hospitals, and to identify areas for improvement. The American Medical Association’s Ethical Forces Program has developed criteria for health care organizations to use to assess their performance related to patient-centered communications.  The Iowa Health System (IHS) Health Literacy Collaborative, launched in 2003, is improving the quality of care provided to all patients and their families, by raising awareness of health literacy issues and developing effective strategies for enhancing communications throughout its health system.  To help state governments improve the approachability of their programs and the readability of their program materials, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded the development of the Health Literacy Style Manual. The Universal Health Care Symbols initiative lead by Hablamos Juntos, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded project to improve patient-provider communications for latinos that is based at the University of California-San Francisco, has developed and tested a set of symbols for potential use in hospital signage.  Twenty-eight symbols covering major clinical departments and services have been developed and are in the public domain and available for use.