Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
Congressional Research Service
Official summary
Version 00 · Introduced in Senate · Dec 6, 2007
National Health Literacy Act of 2007 - Amends the Public Health Service Act to require the Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to establish within the Agency a Health Literacy Implementation Center to enhance efforts to eliminate low health literacy by improving measurements, research, development, and information dissemination. Defines "health literacy" as an individual's ability to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health care decisions.
Directs the Center to: (1) make health literacy resources available to researchers, health care providers, and the public; (2) sponsor demonstration and evaluation projects; (3) develop the next generation of health literacy interventions and tools; (4) identify and fill research gaps relating to health literacy that have direct applicability to quality improvement; (5) assist federal agencies in establishing specific objectives and strategies for carrying out the Center's purpose and in monitoring programs; (6) enter into implementation partnerships to promote adoption of literacy interventions and tools; and (7) enter into an interagency agreement to facilitate coordination of health literacy activities within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Education.
Requires: (1) the Center to convene at least one annual public meeting to help raise awareness about the problem of health literacy and federal and state efforts to address the issue; (2) the Director of the Center to award grants to states to provide for the establishment of a network of state or regional health literacy resource centers; (3) a state health literacy resource center to meet at least annually to share a model of best practices; and (4) the HHS Secretary to contract with the Institute of Medicine to identify opportunities within HHS to improve the public's health literacy through the Medicare and Medicaid programs and at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
No related bills are listed in this snapshot. This does not establish whether the proposal has appeared in earlier Congresses.
Source last updated: Aug 14, 2025. Consult Congress.gov for the current record.
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