Patient-centered care is addressed in the Healthy People 2020 topic area, health communication (HC) and health information technology (HIT), as it relates to the objective, satisfaction with health care providers' communication skills and health literacy (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services |USDHHSl,n.d.). Table 3 displays the objectives in the Healthy People 2020 HC and HIT topic area. Health communication is defined as the study and use of communication strategies to inform and influence individual and community decisions that affect health. One communication strategy is the use of plain language to cleariy communicate health information and improve health literacy (USDHHS, n.d.). Literacy is a part of language and is important in patient-centered care and when working with teams. Literacy encompasses reading and health literacy (Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel, 2011).