Health Literacy Data Map

The Health Literacy Data Map is a new tool from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Using census data, the website provides an online, searchable map of health literacy estimates for the entire United States. It’s an estimate of an area’s health literacy at a census block group level, based on data from the U.S. Census and 5-year American Community Surveys (ACS) summary files.

By mapping estimated health literacy levels, you can identify communities that might be at risk and then target interventions there.

To use the map, go to the site, choose a state on the interactive map, and zoom in all the way to a specific area. Health literacy levels are color-coded, with high shown as green, low as red. You can compare specific areas within a state and nationally. When you’re done, you can download the data you need for your research.

The Health Literacy Data Map was created and hosted by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and is funded by the National Institutes on Aging.

See an interview from Health Lit Live of developers Stacy Bailey and Gang Fang from the Eshelman School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill for a short-and amusing-description of this interesting resource.