I’m updating our patient education folder for fall clinics and want materials patients can use at home. I lean on the CDC prediabetes risk test and a one-page plate method sheet, plus the AHRQ Teach-Back Toolkit for staff, but I’m hunting for free Spanish/English handouts at about 5th-grade level for flu, falls, and blood pressure that print cleanly in black-and-white. What are your go-tos?
I’ve had good luck with MedlinePlus easy-to-read pages for flu, falls, and BP — hit “Print” for a clean black-and-white sheet in English or Spanish; for falls, the CDC STEADI “Check for Safety” checklist lands well in our 65+ visits and prints like a champ, but a few CDC sheets read a notch above 5th grade. https://medlineplus.gov/easytoread/all_easytoread.html.
Building on @jrobinson98, for flu the CDC Vaccine Information Statement is my go-to — 1 page, Spanish/English, and prints clean in B/W: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/vis/vis-statements/flu.html. For BP I hand out the Million Hearts wallet card and for falls NCOA’s “6 steps to prevent a fall”; both are plain-language and free, though the PDFs have color bars so I print grayscale to keep it simple.
Quick example: we’ve been using https://www.healthinfotranslations.org for black‑and‑white, 5th‑grade Spanish/English one‑pagers on flu, falls, and BP — no ink‑guzzling graphics. I search “flu” or “high blood pressure” and pick the “Easy to Read” versions; if one skews higher, I paste into our clinic template and simplify a sentence or two. @jrobinson98 this pairs nicely with the VIS you mentioned for a tidy folder.
For flu, Immunize.org’s patient handouts are a solid swap when the VIS feels dense — English/Spanish, black‑and‑white friendly, and truly one page: https://www.immunize.org/handouts/… For blood pressure, I give a wallet-size log and add a little teach-back prompt — ‘tell me how you’ll check at home’ — which sounds simple but, , it doubled the number who bring readings back. Tiny caveat: their fonts skew small, so I print at 110% and it still fits on one page.
I’ve had good luck with MedlinePlus’ “Easy-to-Read” pages for Spanish/English flu, fall prevention, and blood pressure — clean layout at about a 5th-grade read: medlineplus.gov/easytoread/all_easytoread.html. Small hack: we add a tiny QR to the page so folks can tap “Listen” at home — grandma-fridge simple, @ksmith32.
In our fall clinic, CDC’s STEADI handout “What You Can Do to Prevent Falls” has been a winner — bilingual, plain language, and it prints cleanly: https://www.cdc.gov/steadi/materials.html. For flu I print the CDC “Key Facts” page in reader mode to keep it simple and ink‑saver approved, and for BP the Million Hearts SMBP patient sheet is similarly straightforward (I strip gray boxes before printing): https://millionhearts.hhs.gov/tools-protocols/action-guides/smbp.html.