Thank you for helping patients become informed partners in their health!
The purpose of the 
handbook is to guide staff through the process of developing written patient education materials. These are generally provided to the patients by the clinicians before a procedure, at discharge or at other moments when an important decision must be made.
Topics in the handbook include:
• Assessing the needs of the patient population
• Writing at an appropriate literacy level
• Designing the material visually to ensure that people with lower literacy understand the message being communicated, and
• Ensuring that all materials are evidence-based.
In 2014, the Agence de santé et services sociaux de Montréal (now integrated into the CIUSSS Centre-Est) cited the above handbook in their excellent publication, Pour qu'on se comprene : guide de littératie en santé. The guide provides guidance to health professionals on the topics of health literacy and how to create effective patient materials for print, web, and multimedia (video, podcast, etc). No English version is available at this time.